Topics in Victorian Literature (Winter 2026)

ENGL 451: Victorian Vampires

“The blood is the life!” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula

The nineteenth-century was a period of social and economic instability, and the border-bending nosfuratu seemed the perfect embodiment of the period’s fears—as well as its forbidden desires. This course will look at both the range among, and legacy of, vampire narratives.  We will begin with Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819) on the link between the monster and romance, and then we will move onto to the popular penny dreadfuls’ Varney the Vampire (1845-47). Selections from Karl Marx’s Capital (1867) will help us to understand the parasitic figure as a metaphor for a new capitalist economy, while Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) will lead us to a discussion of the vampire and unrestrained libidinal appetites. We will also study iconic texts such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), which link vampirism with both the old world aristocracy and new world technologies of mechanical reproduction. We will finish the course with a unit on adaptation, looking at the monster’s neo-Victorian legacy in film (Bram Stoker’s Dracula [1992] and Sinners [2025]), television (True Blood and Interview With The Vampire), and comics (American Vampire) and video games (Vampyr). In small groups, students will also produce their own graphic-novel or game-script interpretation of one of the short stories, which they will then present to the class. The final research paper gives students the opportunity to analyze one of the assigned texts in relationship to ongoing themes, such as nationhood, race and empire, consumption and consumerism, sexual self-discipline, or gender dissidence.