Dracula's Family Tree: Demonology, Taxonomy, and Orientalist Influences in Bram Stoker's Iconic Novel

Abstract

Prior to Bram Stoker's Dracula, vampires were never represented in literature as reanimated or ‘undead’ humans capable of transforming into bats. The source of Stoker's innovation may be traced to his personal acquaintance Sir Richard Francis Burton, who in his adaptation of a South Asian anthology of ‘Gothic’ tales of horror and adventure had identified its hero's antagonist, called a vetāla in Sanskrit, as both a male vampire and a giant bat. This article surveys a number of ancient, medieval, and early modern Asian and European precursors of Stoker's vampire lore, noting that unlike Stoker's shape-shifting Transylvanian Count, predatory ‘vampires’ were most often female in gender in these traditions, and their victims male; and reviews the shifting interface between the taxonomical and cultural categories of ‘vampire’ and ‘bat’ in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.