- 上一篇：新课改背景下高中英语阅读教学模式探讨
- 下一篇：阿格妮丝•赫勒的哲学思想看狄更斯《匹克威克外传》中人物的喜剧性
The modern researches on vampire literature and vampire image were mainly done by foreign researchers, and the majority of them were concerning with feminism, psychoanalysis, mass culture, occultism and etc. However, in domestic researches, only a few of them focused on the phenomenon of “Vampire Fever”, most of which were concerning with the transformation on the images of vampire, but few of them have analyzed the reason why the this phenomenon emerged and what had been reflected by it.
1.1 The development of vampire literature in western countries
In the middle of the 18th century, a German poet, Heinrich August Olsenfielder came out a poem—the vampire — which described the intense disputed on the vampire theme. In 1793, Gottfried Burgel’s Lenore published, showing two indispensable topic—love and death—in the field of vampires literature. In 1819, John William Vpolidori published his short story The Vampire on The New Monthly Magazinel, which is considered a modern staple of vampire novels, and started a fashion on the vampire theme in Literary Creation. Even Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens and Bulwer Lytton joined in this fashion.
In 1872, the Irish writer Sheridan came out his short story Camilla, which introduced the vampire image into the Gothic literature, and provided a new way to create a vampire figure. In 1897, Bram Stoke’s novel Dracula came out, which was considered as a peak in the history of vampire novels. Anne Liese, in 1976, published her most well known novel in her vampire series — Interview With the Deliberate. The novel examined the vampire Louis’ life in a highly introspective way, and shaped him into a double image of a tragic hero and a civilian. Stephanie Meyer, an American best-selling author, published a series of novel Twilight in succession since 2005. Compared with the former authors, she depicted vampires in a more human-like way. Vampires are not only horrible and cruel figures anymore. They have more humanity characteristics which are different from other works before (Ronald R. Thomas, 2000).
1.2 The rise of vampire fever in China
In the period of 1960s and 1970s, vampire themed works aroused popularity in the mass culture in European countries. The spread of emerging media such as film and TV has played a vital role in promoting the vampire culture. Vampire films made by western countries had once aroused popularity in Hong Kong — one of the most prosperous regions of Asian film industry (Song, 2012).
In Chinese culture, there was no fixed vampire image. Drinking blood was regarded as an act that only been mentioned in the ghost stories, but was not related to the description in western culture that the blood was the key to the vampires’ sustain life.
In the later period of the Ming dynasty, the zombie image became famous. Just like vampires, they were dead bodies who were awaken by mysterious strength and restored abilities to act like a human. Consequently, in Chinese art works, especially in movies, the image of zombies appeared on the basis of vampire — the sharp fangs and claws, the transformation to a devil after being bitten by another zombie — all of them were vampire behavior patterns. So they were seen as “Chinese vampires”.
In art works, the most zombie figures appeared in films. In the middle and late 1980s, Hong Kong Treasure Grain Company came out a range of Chinese folk “Maoshan zombie movies”. They created the box-office miracles successfully, which led to the fashion of “zombie time”. Some works, such as Mr. Zombie, Uncle Zombie etc. had obtained a good box office.
In 1990, Debao Company’s film A Bite of Love was a completely westernized work which used classical vampire elements from the western culture. It could be said an attempt to make Hong Kong zombie films became international, but the elements of Chinese culture were watered down to a great extent. Since then, the zombie theme was no longer popular and few related art works came out.