Saturday, February 2, 2008

"Circumcising Dracula"

Since Monstrous Regiment is, among many other things, a vampire novel, it's worth pointing out that the body of criticism of vampire fiction is vast. Here's a sample, a 2001 essay titled "Circumcising Dracula," by Jeffrey Weinstock, originally published in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Weinstock writes: "The native earth in which the vampire is condemned to rest is the dirt of anti-Semitism."

2 comments:

jessie said...

who has ever heard of a Jewish vampire?

jessie said...

Okay, now that I've actually read the entire article...
how simultaneously fascinating and horrifying! While I would never associate vampires with Jews today, I can definitely see why Berlow makes the connection. Besides already being an unsavory character, the vampire becomes that much more distasteful knowing the history of prejudice and murder behind it.