Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World - Rilegato

Blair, John

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 069122479X ISBN 13: 9780691224794

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 2025

Riassunto

A riveting history of vampire panics across cultures and down through the millennia―and why killing the dead is better than killing the living

Killing the Dead provides the first in-depth, global account of one of the world’s most widespread yet misunderstood forms of mass hysteria―the vampire epidemic. In a spellbinding narrative, John Blair takes readers from ancient Mesopotamia to present-day Haiti to explore a macabre frontier of life and death where corpses are believed to wander or do harm from the grave, and where the vampire is a physical expression of society’s inexplicable terrors and anxieties.

In 1732, the British public opened their morning papers to read of lurid happenings in eastern Europe. Serbian villagers had dug up several corpses and had found them to be undecayed and bloated with blood. Recognizing the marks of vampirism, they mutilated and burned them. Centuries earlier, the English themselves engaged in the same behavior. In fact, vampire epidemics have flared up throughout history―in ancient Assyria, China, and Rome, medieval and early modern Europe, and the Americas. Blair blends the latest findings in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology with vampire lore from literature and popular culture to show how these episodes occur at traumatic moments in societies that upend all sense of security, and how the European vampire is just one species in a larger family of predatory supernatural entities that includes the female flying demons of Southeast Asia and the lustful yoginīs of India.

Richly illustrated, Killing the Dead provocatively argues that corpse-killing, far from being pathological or unhealthy, served as a therapeutic and largely harmless outlet for fear, hatred, and paranoia that would otherwise result in violence against marginalized groups and individuals.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 069122479X
• ISBN 13: 9780691224794
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 536
• Contatto del produttore: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; U.S.A.
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile