Contagion and the Vampire

This book examines how the vampire has always been connected to ideas of infection, pollution and diseaseeven more so in the 21st century where it expresses the horrors of unseen and unstoppable disease and the foreboding and anxiety that accompany viral outbreaks and wider epidemics. Here the vampire gives physical form to the contagion and associated anxieties around the perceived causes and spread of disease, where it can take on many forms from animal to pestilential particulate matter, creeping shadows and even malignant weather systems. If blood is life, it is the body of the vampire that is death. This timely study looks at how and why the vampire continues to fulfil this function and posits that the true patient zero in the 21st century is no longer the dangerous, ancient, outsider from the East but is the undying monster that is Western culture itself.

A unique study of the intersection of vampires and contagion Provides a timely insight into 21st century reaction to global pandemics and contagion Offers a critique on the ideological contagion at the heart of 21st century Western culture

Autorentext
Simon Bacon is an independent scholar based in Poznä, Poland. He has written and edited 25+ books including Becoming Vampire (2017), Eco-vampires (2019), Nosferatu in the 21st Century (2023), 1000 Vampires on Screen (2 volumes, 2023), and The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire (forthcoming).

Inhalt
Introduction.- Bodies.- Skin.- Blood.- Breath.