吸血鬼 are mythological 或者 folkloric beings who subsist 由 feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead 或者 a living person/being. Although vampiric entities have been recorded in many cultures, and may go back to "prehistoric times", the term vampire was not popularized until the early 18th century, after an influx of vampire superstition into Western 欧洲 from areas where vampire legends were frequent, such as the Balkans and Eastern Europe, although local variants were also known 由 different names, such as vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania. This increased level of vampire superstition in 欧洲 led to mass hysteria and in some cases resulted in corpses actually being staked and people being accused of vampirism.
While even folkloric 吸血鬼 of the Balkans and Eastern 欧洲 had a wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it was interpretation of the vampire 由 the Christian Church and the success of vampire literature, namely John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century, inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula. The Vampyre was itself based on Lord Byron's unfinished story "Fragment of a Novel", also known as "The Burial: A Fragment", published in 1819.
However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of 狼人 and similar legendary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of late Victorian patriarchy". The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still 流行的 in the 21st century, with books, films, video games, and 电视 shows. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".
While even folkloric 吸血鬼 of the Balkans and Eastern 欧洲 had a wide range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it was interpretation of the vampire 由 the Christian Church and the success of vampire literature, namely John Polidori's 1819 novella The Vampyre that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated vampire; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century, inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula. The Vampyre was itself based on Lord Byron's unfinished story "Fragment of a Novel", also known as "The Burial: A Fragment", published in 1819.
However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. Dracula drew on earlier mythologies of 狼人 and similar legendary demons and "was to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of late Victorian patriarchy". The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still 流行的 in the 21st century, with books, films, video games, and 电视 shows. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".
