From horror character to girl's idol. Vampire in contemporary literature for young adults

This thesis deals with the evolution of vampire as a literary character in contemporary production for young adults. Its aim is not to describe all existing works but to cover only the most interesting representations of a vampire in various epochs. The thesis describes the most influential works building the literary stereotype of a vampire and proposes an evolution line. The crucial works in this genre are: Vampire, Carmilla, Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Twilight, House of Night, Vampire Academy and Vampire Boardingschool. Based on them we create a typology according to the appearance, character and narrative role of a vampire. The thesis begins with an anthropological introduction, especially with the origin of the vampires in Easteuropean folk tradition. Farther more we deal with most common genres used to enrich the vampire literature and theory of a literary character as a narrative category. The analysis covers the evolution of a vampire character from its naturalistic appearance to its very civilized pole in the contemporary young adults fiction. We close with the chapter describing the character of a vampire as a literary symbol