Before Polidori, vampires were very different creatures. Shaggy, fetid and bestial, they preyed on family members, neighbours or livestock in nocturnal raids that in many accounts approached both the risible and the revolting.
Vampires properly originating in folklore were widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized.
What historical figure is said to be the inspiration for Dracula?
These gory details, as well as his legally adopted name (Dracula) and his birthplace of Transylvania, have convinced many scholars that Vlad the Impaler provided partial inspiration for Stoker's famous vampire.
Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 25 years.
Robert McCully reports that “the earliest known depiction of a vampire appears on a prehistoric Assyrian bowl…”[1] Much later came the vampiric texts with which we in the West are familiar, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Christobel (1797), Marquis de Sade's Justine (1791), and John Keats's Lamia (1819).
The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which was inspired by the life and legend of Lord Byron.
The vampire postdates witch-hunts, werewolf trials, and even the demon-haunted Puritans. The concept of the vampire as an undead creature inflicting harm originated in Eastern Europe, specifically in Bulgaria, a thousand years ago. Make no mistake, this was a legend isolated among the Slavic people.
Count Dracula is an undead, centuries-old vampire, and a Transylvanian nobleman who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass.
Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1578–1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records.
What is the difference between a vampire and a Dracula?
The key difference between vampire and Dracula is that vampire is a blood-sucking creature and Dracula is a fictional character in the gothic novel 'Dracula'. Vampires are mythological creatures from folklore. They are undead creatures who drink the blood of humans. Dracula is a fictional character based on vampires.
Stoker made his vampire, Dracula, a count, just like the inspiration for the character: Vlad III Draculea, a 15th century count who impaled his murdered enemies upon stakes.
After Dracula's box is finally loaded onto a wagon by Romani men, the hunters converge and attack it. After routing the Romani, Harker decapitates Dracula as Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust, freeing Mina from her vampiric curse. Quincey is mortally wounded in the fight against the Romani.
The ruthless brutality of Vlad III of Walachia, forged by the 15th-century clash between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, would partly inspire Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel centuries later.
“The earliest reference we have to [a] vampire is from a text in Old Russian, written in 1047 A.D.,” said Stanley Stepanic, an assistant professor in the department of Slavic languages and literature at the University of Virginia. The actual term “vampire” made its written debut in 1725, Groom said.
The folklore vampire represented not only sexual, religious, and societal deviance, but also the threat of invasive values from other cultures, symbolized by the spread of vampirism like a disease. The notion of spreading vampirism throughout the villages was a great fear of the Slavic communities.
In Bram Stoker's original tale, it was never revealed precisely how he became the monster, although it was heavily implied through the research Van Helsing did into his past: when he was still alive, Dracula frequented “Scholomance”, a school of dark magic in Transylvania run by the Devil; it seems as though this was ...
The show revolves around three Mikaelson siblings, Klaus (Joseph Morgan), Elijah (Daniel Gillies), and Rebekah (Claire Holt), collectively known as "original vampires", or simply the "originals".
Since Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula was first published in 1897, the character took on a mythic stature and appeared in numerous adaptations and media. For his enduring cultural legacy alone, Dracula is widely considered to be the strongest vampire in fictional history.
Bram Stoker (born November 8, 1847, Clontarf, County Dublin, Ireland—died April 20, 1912, London, England) was an Irish writer best known as the author of the Gothic horror tale Dracula (1897).
However the fictional character, created by author Bram Stoker, was in fact based on a real historical figure called Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the Impaler, also known as Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, was a 15th-century warlord, in what today is Romania, in south-eastern Europe.
In the original 1897 Dracula novel by Bram Stoker, the 1931 film, and the 1992 film Dracula will not / does not burn in the sunlight. In the original novel Dracula was nocturnal, the day is not his natural time. It's his usual time of rest but he can move about by day.
Moffat and Gatiss settle on this answer: Dracula is frightened of death and the Cross confronts him with a man, Jesus, who was willing to die. They reject superstition and tradition in favour of something far neater, more relatable and very in fashion.
Garlic, specifically the chemical compound allicin inside garlic, is a powerful antibiotic. Some European beliefs around vampires stated they were created by a disease of the blood, so a powerful antibiotic would “kill” a vampire.
Stoker's novel, however, became the benchmark for our descriptions of vampires. But how and where did this concept develop? It appears that the folklore surrounding the vampire phenomenon originated in that Balkan area where Stoker located his tale of Count Dracula.
There is a legend amongst the Hebrew people that tags Judas, betrayer of Christ, as the original vampire. We know from ancient texts that Vampires were present on the Earth prior to Jesus' crucifixion, yet the legend is still quite intriguing. The story can be found within the book of Matthew.
