The University of Wisconsin Press


Folklore / Anthropology / Slavic Studies / Psychology



The Vampire
A Casebook
Edited by Alan Dundes


Finally, the truth about vampires.

"The Vampire is a winner... Alan Dundes is a truly remarkable scholar."—Wolfgang Mieder, professor of German and folklore and author of The Politics of Proverbs

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. Eleven 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.

Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, and published ten books with the University of Wisconsin Press, including Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist; The Blood Libel Legend; and Cinderella: A Casebook.He was also the editor of Recollecting Freud by Isidor Sadger.

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cover of The Vampire is a gory photo illustration of a vampire's heart with a stake through it.

October 1998

LC: 98-010399 GR
192 pp. 6 x 9

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Paper $19.95 t
ISBN 978-0-299-15924-5
 
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