A Short History of Vampires

About the lecture

In this module, we provide a short history of vampires in science, culture and literature, focusing in particular on: (i) the appearance of blood-sucking demons in the literature of the ancient world; (ii) the belief in vampires in Eastern Europe and the various scientific studies that described how to deal with them; (iii) the appearance of vampires in English literature in the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge; (iv) the presentation of an aristocratic, cultured and sexually predatory vampire in John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’ (1819) – allegedly based on Lord Byron(!); and (v) the importance in the nineteenth century of female vampires.

About the lecturer

Nick Groom is Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter, a critically acclaimed author on subjects ranging from the history of the Union Jack to Thomas Chatterton, has edited several books and regularly appears on television, radio and at literary festivals as an authority on English Literature, the ‘Gothic’ and ‘British’ identity.