Tres siglos después de que un brote vampírico aterrorizara a la Europa central y dos siglos después de que el The Vampyre de Polidori irrumpiera en la escena literaria, llega esta nueva historia acerca del vampiro, que rastrea sus orígenes hasta un momento y un lugar: 1725, en las fronteras orientales del Imperio de los Habsburgo. Una serie de terroríficos acontecimientos sobrenaturales captó la atención de doctores, científicos y teólogos de todo el continente, que cristalizó en el choque entre la naciente racionalidad de la Ilustración y el folclore tradicional de los Balcanes. La investigación que derivó de esos hechos fue un tema de fascinación popular, mucho antes incluso de que poetas y escritores fueran también presas de una «vampiromanía» que alcanzó su punto álgido en 1897 con el Drácula de Bram Stoker. En esta nueva historia en torno al vampiro, Nick Groom, profesor de literatura inglesa en las universidades de Exeter y Macau y experto en literatura gótica, desentierra la compleja historia de una criatura de ficción devenida en icono, desde los tempranos intentos médicos por sustanciar la leyenda, a las supersticiones de la sangre y el cuerpo, las fuentes sobre Drácula o su relevancia en la cultura popular contemporánea. En este fascinante trayecto, Groom demuestra que el vampiro ha servido siempre para desafiar los convencionalismos, y es por ello por lo que en el presente se erige en un antihéroe esgrimido por los marginados y excluidos. ¿Criatura de ficción, hemos dicho?

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El vampiro

An authoritative new history of the vampire, two hundred years after it first appeared on the literary scene   Published to mark the bicentenary of John Polidori's publication of The Vampyre, Nick Groom's detailed new account illuminates the complex history of the iconic creature. The vampire first came to public prominence in the early eighteenth century, when Enlightenment science collided with Eastern European folklore and apparently verified outbreaks of vampirism, capturing the attention of medical researchers, political commentators, social theorists, theologians, and philosophers. Groom accordingly traces the vampire from its role as a monster embodying humankind's fears, to that of an unlikely hero for the marginalized and excluded in the twenty-first century.   Drawing on literary and artistic representations, as well as medical, forensic, empirical, and sociopolitical perspectives, this rich and eerie history presents the vampire as a strikingly complex being that has been used to express the traumas and contradictions of the human condition.
"An authoritative take on the history of the vampire."-- New York Times Book Review "Nick Groom concludes this invigorating study of vampires by suggesting that we should try to be a bit more like them. Thankfully this doesn't entail hanging shiftily around blood donor banks . . . Rather, Groom wants us to think about vampires as a way of re-enchanting the contemporary human condition."--Kathryn Hughes, Guardian (Book of the Day) 
'Colossally smart. . . Groom is interested in undead Byron, but he is more interested in the aspects of vampirology that pop culture tends to neglect. . . It is a great relief to meet Groom's vampire, still icy from the void and unburdened by the aesthetic of Gothic nightingale-lite. When it materializes, on the threshold of a worrisome dream, it looks nothing like what one expected. . ."--Katy Waldman, New Yorker
"Groom impressively manages to analyze vampires' influence on almost every facet of private and public life--social, theological political, medical, cultural, sexual, literary--over the span of four centuries."--Regina Munch, Commonweal "There are plenty of fiction and nonfiction titles about vampires out there for fans of the Dracula legend, but few cover as much ground as Nick Groom's upcoming book, The Vampire. Out this October, this thoroughly researched history of one of horror's most iconic creatures explores the legend through the lenses of art, literature, medicine, culture, religion, and so much more."--Sadie Trombetta, Bustle.com "We all know about Dracula, yet Bram Stoker's masterpiece represents the culmination of what Nick Groom - an academic sometimes known as the 'Prof of Goth' - calls 'the preceding two centuries of vampirology.' In this dazzling history, he traces its trajectory, drawing on 'evidence from theological treatises to medical reports, travelogues to political allegories, and poetry and fiction to occult tractates, ' and reveals why the vampire 'can challenge us today as powerfully as it has done for nearly three centuries.' Touching on some of our deepest feelings about blood, gender, race, science and society, vampires, quite simply, are 'good to think with.'"-- Times Higher Education "A vast undertaking--a tapestry of history, science, pseudoscience, theology, politics, and art."--Chris R. Morgan, Weekly Standard "In this erudite and engaging history of the vampire Nick Groom explores the blood sucker's journey through the European Enlightenment and beyond, illuminating broader aspects of religion, medicine and culture on the way. In doing so, Groom provides us with a valuable prehistory of the literary Dracula."--Owen Davies, author of Grimoires "Groom succeeds in contextualising the vampire thoroughly, for the first time, in the changing cultures of two hundred years of European history: a remarkable achievement."--Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch "Likely to be the definitive history of the vampire for years to come. In an accessible yet deeply scholarly dive into the archives of medicine, folk-lore, travel writing, theology, politics and literature, Groom produces a compelling account of the vampire as the product of the Enlightenment's clash with its superstitious Eastern other from the seventeenth century onwards. A blood feast that will sustain every kind of vampirologist, from teen Goth up to Professor Van Helsing."--Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies "Our centuries-long fascination with the living dead is given a fresh and welcome consideration by Nick Groom, who mines historical reality--and unreality--with a keen appreciation of cultural meaning and metaphor."--David J. Skal, author of Something in the Blood

El vampiro (2020)

The Vampire (2018)