The Horror of Fangs: The Celebration of a Counter-Cult

Abstract

A scrutiny of the vampire literature surely reveals to the reader an attempt to uphold a machinery of opposition by the Gnostics, a fraction of Christianity, subjected to sectarian animosity, in a strategic confrontation with the larger and the more widely accepted section of Christianity. Though ultimately all English vampire stories of the nineteenth century overtly or suggestively proclaim the victory of Christ over the dark forces, they never fail to suggest the existence of a binary opposition to prevalent dogmas and doctrines within Christianity by the marginalized, the stigmatized, and the victimized. This is how vampire-fiction timelessly contains the spirit of the Armageddon where the act of designating ‘goodness’ or ‘evilness’ to the bellicose sides often does not conform to what religion expects us to believe.