Table of Contents

Introduction: Cultural Teratology
Vampire Country: Borders of Culture and Power in Central Europe
Vampires and Satire in the Enlightenment and Romanticism
The Bourgeois Vampire and Nineteenth-Century Identity Theft
Dracula: Vampiric Contagion in the Late Nineteenth Century
Vampirism, the Writing Cure, and Realpolitik: Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
Vampires in Weimar: Shades of History
Conclusion: The Vampire in the Americas and Beyond
Works Cited
Filmography
Index

Reviews

[S]ucceeds in bringing a wealth of new voices from French and German scholarship to a field mostly dominated by English-language research. . . . [B]rings together a wealth of exciting literary, biographical, and filmic material . . . . [S]cholars and students interested in the monster will no doubt enjoy reading this book, and its individual chapters on the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu are a highly recommended read for courses on the subject.
*MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW*

[C]overs a lot of ground. . . . [E]specially informative for classroom use.
*MONATSHEFTE*

Butler brings to the feast . . . a rare cross-cultural perspective. . . . He also, and very convincingly, calls attention to the instability of genre that haunts vampire narratives . . . . Not merely a contribution to the cultural explication of the vampire, [this book] also touches on . . . broader . . . social transformations of both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe . . . with elegance and intelligence.
*VICTORIAN STUDIES*

Butler's analyses of the development of vampire literature in the European tradition - most notably in France and Germany - are the most distinctive. . . A valuable contribution.
*CHOICE*

Butler's study shows conclusively that the term 'vampire' represents a construct that has been exposed over the centuries to semantic and medial processes of change while mirroring and intensifying them in a cultural sense. . . . [T]he work [also] shows that vampires as a popular export of the Hollywood film industry are returning above all to the place from which they emerged in the eighteenth century to conquer the world: to Europe.
*LITERATURKRITIK.DE*

Butler, one of the most promising American comparatists of the last generation, has written an extremely enjoyable book. . . . [He] uses the tools of history and geography to read the figure of the vampire. His study might also be called: 'The Vampire: A Political History.
*ILSOLE24ORE.COM*

Provides interesting analyses of the . . . discourses shaping the vampire, and uncovers fascinating cross currents.
*GERMAN QUARTERLY*