Our Blood, Ourselves: The Symbolics of Blood in Vampire Texts and Vampire Communities

Abstract

My thesis examines the ways in which blood is represented in vampire novels, films, and vampire communities. I locate my thesis within a postmodern framework that encompasses a diverse range of critical approaches such as postmodern, feminist and materialist theories, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and histories of medicine and ideas. The mixture of high and low status texts selected examine the ways identity, self-fashioning and the body are constructed through their use of a symbolics of blood. The first chapter examines the changing meanings of blood in vampire texts from the nineteenth century to the present through the discourses of medical science and technology. While blood is shown to be an important fluid in biomedicine, at the same time it conjures up associations with identity and corporeality. The second chapter examines consumption as a trope to define and control the female vampire. Through the analysis of literal and figurative acts of cannibalistic consumption, eating and incorporation in vampire literature, the chapter seeks to address female appetite, disease and identity. The third chapter examines the use of blood and postmodern self-fashioning in vampire communities in order to expose the various meanings of real or symbolic blood within postmodern culture. I conclude by addressing issues and ideas that my thesis has brought to the fore and which can be explored further.