The Vampire, Alan Dundes
The Vampire, Alan Dundes
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

The Vampire
A Casebook

Author: Alan Dundes

Narrator: Marguerite Gavin

Unabridged: 6 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/14/2010

Synopsis

Finally, the truth about vampires. Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood. The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word "vampire"; Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire has been and continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it - in reality or in fiction. The book is published by University of Wisconsin Press.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ariadne on January 01, 2024

A collection of 11 articles about vampires, this book is great for anyone who wants to write about vampires or is interested in the origins/truth of vampires instead of the popular media idea of vampires. My favorite sections included legal descriptions of crimes that were blamed on vampires, the va......more

Goodreads review by Blair on May 16, 2021

The first thing I should say is that this is emphatically NOT a book for people whose only interest in vampires is from the point of view of paranormal romances and vampire films, but rather it studies the genuine historical folklore, pathology, forensics and science surrounding the vampire mythos.......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on September 13, 2024

I realised fairly quickly after I started listening to this collection that it would be too dense an academic work to truly get my teeth into aurally. Thus, I listened to it fairly quickly making a few notes and got hold of the physical book to chew on more thoroughly in the future. There are certai......more

Goodreads review by Mikael on January 21, 2018

As a book done by putting together a bunch of articles, you will get a quite mixed bag. To start with, this book is about vampires, not the litterary type, the once that are real. At least in what people believe. It has articles about Greek and slavic vampires, psychological cases about people who s......more

Goodreads review by J on January 18, 2021

Not just an excellent source in itself but also a great reference work guiding the interested reader to a plethora of works about vampires and the vampire myth. Skip the last two essays on your read. They are little more than pseudoscientific babble convinced that "modern" or "clinical" vampirism som......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List