Vampire fiction then and now. A Comparison of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and Anne Rice's 'Interview with the Vampire'

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: To understand what makes vampires attractive to people nowadays, at first one has to look at the vampire myth and where it comes from. Next this paper will look into the supernatural abilities the vampires in Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' and Anne Rice's 'Interview with the Vampire' have. After that it will focuse on the characters and their relationships to each other. In the end, the results will be summarized and brought into relation with today's society. The vampires in media nowadays own seductive attributes and superpowers. These are attributes the first vampire in literature, Count Dracula, did not have. Nevertheless, Bram Stoker´s Gothic novel 'Dracula', written in 1897, laid the foundations for all vampire genres afterwards. Count Dracula was the first vampire in history who became so famous that everybody still knows him today. He has some superpowers but no romantic or sexual interests and no human soul, whereas, Anne Rice's vampires from the novel 'Interview with the Vampire', written in 1973, have these attributes. Rice's vampires were the first ones who had a soul and feelings. Hence they were the example for the modern vampires of the 20th and 21th century.