A Whole Other Ball Game: Women's Literature on Women's Sport
2000; Bowling Green State University; Volume: 23; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1540-594X
Autores Tópico(s)Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
ResumoBlood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger's collection of essays, entitled Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture, examines late twentieth-century domestication or taming of literary vampire. The editors and most of collection's authors accept as foundational premise that vampires have transformed from their late nineteenth-- century signification as monstrous Other become largely sympathetic characters. For example, Lestat and Louis of Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles novels invite audience identification. This literary domestication has progressed point where now, at end of century, vampire serves not as literal horror in some `night of living dead' reconstruction, but as metaphor for various aspects of contemporary life (5), such as sexuality, power, alienation, illness, secularized evil, and persistence of fantastic in supposedly rationalist age. The collection, in terms of its eclectic coverage and range of writing styles, makes worthwhile addition scholarly canon of vampire studies, such as James B. Twitchell's The Living Dead: A Study of Vampire in Romantic Literature (1981), Margaret L. Carter's Dracula: The Vampire and Critics (1988), Ken fielder's Vampire (1994), and Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995). The book is divided into four parts: Reading History, Reading Writers, Reading Consumption, and Reading Other. The first section, Reading History, includes essays by Nina Auerbach, Jules Zanger, Margaret L. Carter, and Joan Gordon. Each of these essays treats some aspect of vampire's metaphoric transformation from nineteenth century into twentieth. One of strongest and most concise contributions, Nina Auerbach's essay (excerpted from her book), notes how the coming of impersonal, imperial Dracula in 1897 (11) supplanted J. Sheridan Le Fanu's much friendlier prototypical vampire Carmilla and has problematically affected adaptations of Carmilla ever since. Jules Zanger writes of demystification process that has turned Anti-Christ vampire into much more mundane social deviant ... eroding in process of transformation many of qualities that generated its original appeal (17). Margaret Carter maintains that American vampire novels and stories since 1970 often assume in sympathetic fashion vampire's point of view-a shift that suggests alien outsider in late twentieth century is no longer be feared by desired. Joan Gordon sees many vampire tales, such as Le Fanu's Carmilla at one end of historical spectrum and Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls at other, as metaphoric searches for an all-powerful mother figure and family. Part two, Reading Writers, is in some ways most interesting section of book, in that it allows writers in contemporary vampire genre speak directly question of vampire's domestication. Suzy McKee Chamas, author of The Vampire Tapestry, explains that in her book she set out avoid romanticization of evil and instead depict a simple and ruthless predator ... without softening effects of sentimentalism and snobbery (60). Her fictional predator, Dr. Weyland, is because the most successful predatory identity in human society is male (62). Brian Stableford, author of vampire novels The Empire of Fear (1988) and Young Blood (1992), writes of his attempt give vampirism biological (as opposed supernatural) basis. Jewelle Gomez, author of The Gilda Stories (1991), concludes section by outlining her literary project: explore traditional, patriarchal form through character of black lesbian vampire in order to contribute new, more feminist-grounded mythology (92). …
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