Vampires as 'meaning machines' : signifying the monster through race and sexuality.

Abstract

This thesis examines the complex imbrication of race and sexuality in the vampire figure during the course of its literary life. It examines traditional, nineteenth-century representations (Polidori's The Vampyre, Le Fanu's Carmilla, and Stoker's Dracula) of the vampire as monstrous because of its racial and sexual deviance as well as two twenty-first century reinterpretations of the vampire. The first of these is Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, which reproduces the vampire as the ideal romantic hero through his whiteness and heteronormativity. The second of these is Octavia Butler's Fledgling, which reappropriates the vampire as black and sexually queer in order to challenge the normative systems of white privilege and heteronormativity.