Note on the history of vampire lit

This essay from last month by Joseph Laycock, Vampire Bible: Will Smith and The Legend of Cain Religion Dispatches 08/06/2010, has some interesting background on vampire lit:

Our idea of vampires comes from the folklore of Eastern Europe. While there was a tradition that someone killed by a vampire would also become undead, it does not appear that these cultures were preoccupied with "the origin" of vampires. In folklore, infection was not necessary. A corpse could become a vampire for any number of reasons such as if the individual had been excommunicated or violated social taboos. Some people were simply fated to rise as vampires.

Western curiosity about "where vampires come from" likely began with the Victorians. Vampires interested Victorian anthropologists like E.B. Tylor and Sir James Frazer who were obsessed with finding the origin of religious belief. Then in 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published, vividly depicting the contagious spread of vampirism in London. Many readers were left wondering: If Dracula turned Lucy Westenra, who turned Dracula? Who was the "patient zero" of vampirism?

As early as the Enlightenment, vampirologists turned to the Bible and other ancient sources for answers. In 1746, biblical scholar Augustine Calmet said of the vampire panics then occurring in Eastern Europe, "It is certain, that nothing of this sort was ever seen or known in antiquity. Search the histories of the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and you will find nothing that comes near it." Conversely, Montague Summers, writing in the early twentieth century, argued that there are hints of vampirism throughout the Bible.

The movie in the title has Cain, son of Adam and Eve and murderer of his brother Abel, as the first vampire. There's even a midrash that at least alludes to something consistent with that version:

In some of the legends of Jewish midrash, Cain is actually the product of an adulterous affair between Eve and the fallen angel Samael. Tellingly, Eve has a dream prior to the fratricide in which she sees, "the blood of Abel flow into the mouth of Cain, who drank it with avidity." The idea that Cain was the progenitor of evil appears again in the Epic of Beowulf, where the monster Grendel is described as one of the outlawed "clan of Cain." [my emphasis]

Tags: vampire lit