Vampire Theatricals: An Exploration of Vampires on the Stage

Posted on 13th February 2017 by Sam George

Last week on ‘Reading the Vampire’ we explored ‘The Vampire Theatre: Stage Plays and Victorian Melodrama’ our workshop texts were J. R. Planché, The Vampyre, or Bride of the Isles (1820); William Thomas Moncrieff, The Spectre Bridegroom (1821); George Blink, The Vampire Bride; or, Tenant of the Tomb (1834), in Beyond the Count: The Literary Vampire of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, ed. by Margo Collins (Bathory Gate Press, 2015); Johann Ludwig Tieck, ‘Wake Not the Dead’ (trans 1823) available on Project Gutenberg 

In the workshop we focussed on the representation of the vampire in the theatre, investigating the influence of Polidori, and the vampire in Victorian melodrama prior to the Count’s appearance with all his theatrical tropes in Stoker’s Dracula. The female vampire made her first appearance  in the shape of Brunhilda, the bad wife and bloodsucking serpent or Lamia figure, in Blink’s ‘The Vampire Bride’ (1834). This   bloodcurdling theatrical is inspired by Tieck’s ‘Wake Not the Dead’ (translated 1823). The following critical material was discussed in relation to the plays: Katie Harse, ‘“Melodrama Hath Charms”: Planché’s Theatrical Domestication of Polidori’s “The Vampyre”’, Journal of Dracula Studies, 3 (2001), 3-7; Ronald Macfarlane, ‘The Vampire on Stage’, Comparative Drama, 21 (1987), 19-33; Roxana Stuart, Stage Blood: Vampires of the Nineteenth-Century Stage (Bowling Green, OH, Bowling Green University Press, 1994)

We were joined by my PhD student  Matt Beresford, who is currently writing a chapter on Polidori’s legacy in these plays for his thesis. I was thrilled following our lively discussions to discover that a production of Marschner’s 1827 ‘Der Vampyr’, the first Gothic grand opera, inspired by the Romantic/Byronic vampire was available on BBC Radio 3. ‘The Vampire’, was recorded in Geneva last year and is presented by Katie Derham.

Absolutely gothtastic!!

 

 

 

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Nikolei Polevoi, Russian Fairy Tales

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Here’s a beautiful digitisation of Nikolei Polevoi’s Russian Fairy Tales in a 19o5 translation by R. Nisbet Bain, with sumptuous illustrations by Noel L. Nisbet.

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CFP: Gendering the Urban Imaginary: Fantasy, Affect, Transgression, University of Debrecen, Hungary, 12-13 May 2017

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Another conference that followers of OGOM may be interested in: Gendering the Urban Imaginary: Fantasy, Affect, Transgression at the University of Debrecen, Hungary.

The Gender, Translocality and the City Research Group based at the University of Debrecen is pleased to announce its second annual conference, which is going to explore the role of gender, fantasy, and emotion in the production of urban space. Papers focusing on urban fantasy in twentieth- and twenty-first-century anglophone literary, visual and cultural studies are invited for presentation, and we also encourage submissions relying on psychogeographical approaches to explore the (post)modern imaginary of city life. Papers investigating the modern(ist) city, postmodern labyrinths, art and the aestheticization of urban space, the playable city, uncanny metropolises, paranormal urban worlds, suburban and subterranean space, spectral cities and fantasy scapes, for instance, are welcome. Presentations addressing “the mutually defining relation between bodies and cities” (Elizabeth Grosz) will be considered as well, especially if focusing on the “atmosphere” (Teresa Brennan) or “sense of place” (Jon Anderson) as the articulation of affective traces which define subjectivities in relation to specific environments. We also encourage submissions on topics such as transgressions, fear, and the city; metamorphoses, enjoyment, and urban space; emapthy and the city; and so on.Theoretical contributions investigating the intersections between affect theory and city studies, including, but not limited to, the works of Sarah Ahmed, Elspeth Probyn, Carolyn Pedwell, for instance, and Michel De Certeau, Elizabeth Wilson, Elizabeth Grosz, etc., are also within our scope of interest.

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The Icelandic Dracula

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Fascinating article by Hans Corneel de Roos on an Icelandic vampire novel from 1900 which has a curious hypertextual relationship with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (‘hypertextual’ is Gérard Genette’s term for that variety of intertextuality where one text is modelled on or transformed from another).

Afterthought:
I didn’t realise Sam had mentioned this in a previous post, where she reports on Prof. Clive Bloom’s research on this same book at the Beliefs and Behaviours in Education and Culture conference at the University of Timisoara last year.

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Werewolves, pulp fiction, and folklore

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

OGOM’s very own Kaja Franck has contributed a fascinating item, ‘Old Tails in New Bottles: Folklore’s Influence on Pulp Fiction Werewolves‘ to the marvellous Folklore Thursday website, talking about the interactions between and generic transformations among popular fiction and folkloric accounts of the werewolf.

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Fantasy Worlds with Frances Hardinge, Newcastle University, 8 February 2017

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

I apologise for not posting this sooner. The excellent children’s author Frances Hardinge, author of the Costa Award-winning The Lie Tree and the brilliant changeling novel The Cuckoo Song, will be talking on Wednesday, 8 February at Newcastle University–details here.

Join us for an exclusive event with award-winning author Frances Hardinge, as she discusses the borders between fantasy and reality and her inspiration for her writing with Aishwarya Subramanian from Newcastle University’s Children’s Literature Unit. Her latest novel The Lie Tree described as a “a Victorian Gothic mystery with added paleontology, blasting powder, post-mortem photography and feminism.” won the Costa Book of the Year 2015 and audiences will also be treated to a reading from the outstanding novel by Frances as part of this very special event.

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Seductive and Demented, ‘The Lure’ is Unlike Any Musical Ever Made

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Who can resist mermaids? Well, maybe it’s just me. I love musicals too so the film reviewed here, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure sounds irresistible. There’s a trailer; it looks scary, mysterious, and lots of fun.

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Angela Carter news

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

There seems to be something cropping up every day about the fabulous Angela Carter!

Here are links to four Carter-related items that I’ve come across:

This exhibition, The Bloody Chamber, at the Koppel Project in London from 8 Feb to 18 March 2017, has paintings, an installation, and a film by artists inspired by Carter’s reworking of the Bluebeard story, ‘The Bloody Chamber’.

On the brilliant Angela Carter OnlineCaleb Sivyer reviews another video inspired by Carter website, , accompanying it with a clip: ‘Maria José Pires and Ricardo Bonacho have created a video inspired by Angela Carter’s short story “The Bloody Chamber” (1979), entitled “The Bloody Chamber: A Taste of Angela Carter”. The video explores the “gastronomical imagery and metaphors” of Carter’s story through suggestive images and sound.’

And here’s a review by Mina Holland of Carter’s Book of Wayward Girls & Wicked Women.

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CFP: Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the Ecogothic, Trinity College Dublin, 17-18 November 2017

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Another conference! Ecogothic is an emerging trend in ways of looking at Gothic, horror, and fantastic narratives. People who attended OGOM’s 2015 Company of Wolves conference, with its probing of the interrelationship of culture and nature, human and animal, might well be interested in this CfP for the Gothic Nature conference at Trinity College Dublin.

Gothic and horror fictions have long functioned as vivid reflections of contemporary cultural fears. Wood argues that horror is ‘the struggle for recognition of all that our society represses or oppresses’, and Newman puts forward the idea that it ‘actively eliminates and exorcises our fears by allowing them to be relegated to the imaginary realm of fiction’.  Now, more than ever, the environment has become a locus of those fears for many people, and this conference seeks to investigate the wide range of Gothic- and horror-inflected texts that tackle the darker side of nature.

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CFP: The Fan Studies Network 2017 Conference, University of Huddersfield, 24-25 June 2017

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Another CfP for a conference on Fan Studies at Huddersfield.

The fifth anniversary of the annual Fan Studies Network Conference is visiting the University of Huddersfield for a vibrant two-day programme during June 2017. The conference will celebrate and continue FSN’s proud tradition of offering an enthusiastic space for interdisciplinary researchers at all levels to connect, share resources, and further develop their research ideas.

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