The Path of Vampires. From Legends to Literature

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: Vampires. We are all familiar with this word, but do we really know what it means? Fangs, immortality, darkness? They are something greater than these. There is a reason why we, humans are drawn to them for more than a century now. Nowadays glimmering handsome teen-vampires are becoming more famous with every movie and book released. Well, to maintain the popularity of them, it is necessary to modernize the vampires so they will keep in good with the subsequent generations. Since the release of Twilight , vampires started to become more human-like, considering their feelings. Their abilities remained supernatural, but they lost their demonic features, which they used to have in the 18th - 19th century. With immortality and their transformation into caring creatures comes the conception of eternal love, so it is not surprising that the main target group in the 21st century became teenage girls and young women. They seem to be satisfied with these renewed demons and their romantic stories. However, it was not the reason why people started to love these creatures. Now, I am going to explain where vampires come from and what they used to be like in the first literary works where they were mentioned.