Random Updates

Last Wednesday, I received a signed copy of one of the best books you could ever get on vampire folklore. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout Jan L. Perkowski's anthology, Vampire Lore: From the Writings of Jan Louis Perkowski (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2006).

The first half reprints his monographs, 1972-1989 and the second half features his articles right up to 2006 (see: "Props for Perky"). Absolutely brilliant. Can't recommend it highly enough.

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I know I've delayed mentioning it, but I actually made another blog entry contribution to VampChix. It was called "So You Want to Be a Vampirologist", in which I give some handy tips on which sources to peruse, etc.

I e-mailed it to her ("RE: Vampire Blog Entry‏", Saturday, 13 February 2010 2:48:07 PM) and made a minor revision ("Blog Entry Revision", Saturday, 13 February 2010 2:58:36 PM).

As with my previous contribution there, some minor edits and mistakes have crept into the transmission.

I'm gonna get pretty pedantic now, so bare with me!

• The "believe" in "how many folklorists actually believe in pixies, unicorns and ogres" wasn't italicised like it should've been. Same goes for the "be" in "Nor do you actually have to be a vampire". Ditto for the "fifty" in "managed to isolate fifty. . ." and the title of my blog after "...if I hadn't started..."
  
• The hyperlink in "blog entries" was meant to apply to "one of my blog entries". Slightly cut down.
  
• The link I gave in the title for Jay Stevenson's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vampires (2002), was instead changed to an Amazon sidebar ad within in the post. Same goes for Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (1988).
• Michele adds an Amazon link to John Cuthbert Lawson's Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals (1910). Ditto for Summers' The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928) and The Vampire in Europe (1929).
• The original Amazon.co.uk link for David Keyworth's Troublesome Corpses (2007) is changed to the American version. Same goes for Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires, Ourselves (1995).
• The link to my "Public Service Announcement" was edited out. But, to be fair, I was given a warning about that in advance.
• "That's better!", which concludes the contribution was actually a note I added to the revision I handed into Michele, and not meant to be part of the blog entry itself.
  

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I've decided to add a new gadget to my blog, so I can keep all my contributions elsewhere in one place. A bit of a blog roll anthology, if you will. Got the idea from Andrew Dumas' "Reviews" list.

The gadget's ingeniously titled "Contributions Elsewhere". You can find it sandwiched between "Labels" and "Blogs I Read".

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Settled in to watch Bram Stoker's Dracula's Guest (2008) yesterday.

Hoo boy, what a terrible film.

The blurb promotes sword fights (not that I think these have a real place in vampire flicks) and we're treated to about two short scenes where this occurs.

Kelsey McCann (Elizabeth), Amy Lyndon (Mrs. Witham) and Dan Speaker (Admiral Murray) were particularly awful in their roles. Andrew Bryniarski (Dracula) was quite imposing, but was obviously riffing on Gary Oldman's portrayal in certain scenes and was probably a bit too "husky" for the role. Kept getting distracted by his squat fingers.

Even though the flick's rated M here, there's bugger-all violence (or much other stuff, for that matter). All the deaths (except Dracula's) take place off-screen. No close-up bites, nothing.

The plot bares little-to-no resemblance to the actual Bram Stoker's "Dracula's Guest", which was promoted as an excised chapter from Dracula (1897), when it was first published in a posthumous short story collection, Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales (1914).

If you wanna read a way more thorough review of the flick, check out Andrew's.

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Borrowed Peter Day's (ed.) Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006) and Harry A. Senn's Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1982) on interlibrary loan today.

Never read Senn's book before. But what I've been flicking through so far, has been quite interesting, even if he does seem to be pretty flexible in his use of the term "vampire".

I'd love to get a copy of this book meself, but the asking price for this book can be quite steep. So, kids, if you wanna avoid forking out that kinda dough, consult your local library about interlibrary loans!

Peace out.

Props for Perky

Speaking of anthologies, I inadvertently stumbled across the contents pages (pdf file) of Jan L. Perkowski's Vampire Lore: From the Writings of Jan Louis Perkowski (2006).

A listing for the book appears on its publisher's (Slavica) website.

I've already got Perkowski's Vampires of the Slavs (1976) and The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism (1989) and a few of his articles. But there's others I don't have.

Even though I prefer original source works, I'm looking at getting a copy of this book for the hell of it. He's right up there with Paul Barber (Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, 1988) in terms of major contributions to vampire studies, as far as I'm concerned.

That's not to say that his works haven't been met with some criticism.

It's also nice to see that he's still teaching Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia.

And I Thought They Were Pricey...

Yesterday, I gave coverage to the high price for J. Thomas Garza's The Vampire in Slavic Cultures (2009).

Previously, in "Two Recent Purchases", I mentioned that copies of Jan L. Perkowski's Vampires of the Slavs (1976) could go for as high as US $295.

Another pricey vampire book is Harry A. Senn's Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania (1982), which Amazon is selling for US $250.

However, all those titles are completely dwarfed by the price for Alok Bhalla's Politics of Atrocity and Lust: The Vampire Tale as a Nightmare History of England in the Nineteenth Century (1990):

And the bloody thing's only 88 pages long!

Atrocity, indeed.

That essentially puts it in the same rank as original copies of Calmet's disserations.

How's that for perspective?

Rzączynski Gains Fame Through Quotation

Magia Posthuma's most recent post, "De cruentationibus cadaverum", deals with Gabrielis [Gabriel] Rzączynski's 1721 work, Historia naturalis curiosa Regni Poloniae. It is often cited as an early text on vampires.

However, Jan L. Perkowski notes the following in The Darkling: A Slavic Treatise on Vampirism (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1989), p. 113:

Father Gabriel Rzączynski (1664/5-1737) was a Polish Jesuit priest who wrote the first national history of Poland, Historia Naturalis Curiosa Regni Poloniae, (Sandomir, 1721). The text, which is in Latin, is on page 365, Section II of the Historia, but it is a quotation from the manuscript of another Jesuit, Father Gengell's Eversio Atheismi.

For the record, Georgio Gengell's work, Eversio Atheismi seu pro Deo contra Atheos libri duo, was published in 1716.

Two Recent Purchases

One of the greatest boons for vampire research is eBay.

Items of interest are generally available for low prices - barring currency exchange rates and shipping costs.

Here are a couple of recent items I managed to score:

Clive Leatherdale's Dracula: The Novel & the Legend: A Study of Bram Stoker's Gothic Masterpiece (The Leisure Circle, 1985) arrived on August 5th.

I'm not big on Dracula scholarship, but Leatherdale has some interesting things to say on the development of the Vampire Myth.

Jan L. Perkowski's Vampires of the Slavs (Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica Publishers, Inc., 1976) arrived today.

This is the paperback version. I've previously borrowed a hardback copy - but, in hindsight, that may have been a library hardback edition.

Certainly one of the most influential vampire anthologies, it's also not cheap to come by: some copies can sell up to $295 onwards. I was lucky enough to win this one for significantly less.