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MARTIN J. WOOD (ESSAY DATE 1999)

SOURCE: Wood, Martin J. “New Life for an Old Tradition: Anne Rice and Vampire Literature.” In The Blood Is the Life: Vampires in Literature, edited by Leonard G. Heldreth and Mary Pharr, pp. 59-78. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Wood argues that “Rice’s works force a jarring revision of our understanding of vampire mythology and, finally, of ourselves.”

Most vampire fiction succeeds in thrilling its readers because humans find stories of evil and horror immensely attractive. Few monsters have seemed quite so evil or quite so horrible as vampires, and their very attractiveness has largely distracted us from some fairly silly aspects of their traditional myths. So long as authors have been able to conjure up the allure of vampirism they could ignore the apparent irrelevance of its mythology. But...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. General Commentary
   1. Edward J. Ingebretsen (Essay Date 1996)
   2. Martin J. Wood (Essay Date 1999)
4. Further Reading