Literary Tradition and Symbolism of the Female Vampire and its Adaptation in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Martin Luther University (Institut fr Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Monstrous Loves and Beautiful Beasts: The Twilight Series in Literary Contexts, language: English, abstract: The vampire is one of the favourite artificial characters in popular literature. As a mythical creature that transcends the borders of life and death it has been used to depict the dissolution of boundaries in different forms of societies and belief systems since the ancient Greece, but varied in form according to social and individual developments. This paper will first give a short overview of the origin and development of female vampires and lamiae in literature. Then a closer look will be cast on a few selected representations of the female vampire to show the various ways of their depictions, the similarities in their features as well as differences in their symbolic appliance. Finally, the female vampires in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight will be focussed upon to further elaborate the characteristics of the "modern female vampire" in her family setting as opposed to her predecessors.