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1、Literature Review1. Situation of the ResearchNowadays, the vampire legend is researched widely and enduringly by the western academic circles. And the systematical, deep investigation focuses on the vampire literature especially. From the end of the nineteenth century to these days, the general tren

2、d of the vampire literature is the enriched and plentiful vampire image which can be humanized. Vampire is closely related to its time, just like Nina Auerbachs simple observation that “every age embraces the vampire that it needs” (qtd. in Gordon and Hollinger, 1997: 1). Before the nineteenth centu

3、ry, the characteristic of this vampire is that, most of the time, they were portrayed as monsters. With the publication and popularity of the works about vampire, the vampire has become one of the most enduring and successful grotesque creatures. These novels, in particular, explore the modern reade

4、rs sense of alienation, their fears of death and decay, and their confusion for the established good and evil. Obviously, the vampire figure is an adaptable one and can function as a breaker of moral, social, and sexual taboos. It also reflects some anxieties in peoples mindsbetween life and death,

5、love and hate, fantasy and reality, private and public, and so on. The reader would identify with the human hero and feel completely detached from the monster. Through the twentieth century, the modern writers overthrow the traditional rigid figure of the vampire and present people with a more natur

6、al vampire, a more human vampire, or a vampire hero. Contemporary authors place more emphasis on the positive aspects of the vampire and begin to probe into the internal world of this tortured figure. They attempt to make the vampire figures more and more like our human beings. So the works always m

7、irror a range of issues about the current society and the existing social ethics. Among these authors, Anne Rice is a major figure, who is famous for writing vampire novels. Her representative works is The Vampire Chronicles, which is called the Bible of vampires by vampire fans and vampire research

8、ers. Every book of Anne Rices Vampire Chronicles has been received with general acclaim, putting vampires in spotlight. Anne Rice is undoubtedly a writer whose works shape and influence todays popular culture. Her works attract not only general interest among her readers but also much serious schola

9、rly attention. Anne Rices immensely popular horror fiction attracts both the academic reader and the general reader with equal ease. During the past several years, for example, no other writer of popular horror fiction has drawn as much academic attention at the national Popular Culture Association

10、conference meetings as has Anne Rice. Typically, at least one entire panel of scholarly essays is offered annually on Rices gothic fiction, and these presentations are always well attended. In fact, a number of the articles appearing in this collection originated as papers delivered at one of these

11、PCA conference panels. Such scholarly interest indicates that her best-selling gothic novels draw the highly educated, the academically oriented, or those who recognize in her fiction evidence of sophisticated characterization and intricate plotting. (Gary and Ray Broadus, 1996: 1)Many scholars were

12、 all loud in Rices praise from different research perspectives of her works. Martin J. Wood once looked deeply into Rices works through narrative mode, topics, and the main characters in the image, plot and literary expression. He pointed that the change of content and narrative style in Rices works

13、 has made people unsettled and meanwhile rendered vampire a new life. Her works force a jarring revision of our understanding of vampire mythology and, finally, of ourselves. In other words, the vampire myth is indeed relevant. Rice has challenged the traditional portraits of vampires in several fun

14、damental ways, producing a series of book that cannot properly be understood if read according to the old codes (qtd. in Leonard G., 1999: 59-60). Besides, Gary explored the gothic tradition of Rices works. He said Rice is faithful to the gothic tradition and honors that tradition in her own work (1

15、996: 1). Her fiction is not mere slavish imitation of the efforts of past masters of the gothic form. Rice perceives in her narrative structures a means by which a larger, more interesting cultural mythology can be developed. Indeed, with the appearance of each new novel, Rice is creating, refining,

16、 and embellishing her invented mythology. For her, the process of mythmaking better expresses those things she finds important to discuss in her writings (1996: 4). Keller who is the professor of English Renaissance Literature made a research on Anne Rices works in the perspective of Sexual Politics

17、, which is the gay question. He pointed that one of the most striking features of Rices vampires is their sexual ambiguity. Rice has broken the culturally imposed silence upon the issue of homosexuality in virtually every one of her novels, a move that is both bold and socially significant in popula

18、r fiction because it is obligatory silence that perpetuates repression and myth (2000: 14).Ramsland argues Rice has taken the classic tales of vampires and changed them into modern myths, more fantastic and frightening, because the supernatural stories she tells are about us, our own dreams, fears a

19、nd feelings. In his book, he concludes that Rice pointed out the vampire image was a mythic image that we used to talk about being human. Vampires were not literal evil. They enabled her to talk about ideas that go beyond them. We could make a vampire character talk about anything that concerned us.

20、 She didnt think theres any moral, psychological, or aesthetic limit to supernatural fiction (1995: 14). According to Gordon and Hollinger, the image of vampire has changed from a bloodthirsty monster to an alienated sympathetic figure in contemporary society. The vampire serves “not as the literal

21、horror in some night of the living dead reconstruction, but as a metaphor for various aspects of contemporary life” (1997: 5). Some critics contend Anne Rices vampire narratives weave in and out of the distant past in order to comment on the state of contemporary American culture. They reckon her va

22、mpires in The Vampire Chronicles as the barometer of the anxieties plaguing modern American culture, for example, the homoerotism, the disease, the split of the Self and the Other, and the loss of faith. At first glance, Rices gothic fiction holds the same attraction for us as does television soap o

23、pera. Such an observation is certainly not meant to denigrate Rices artistic skills. Quite the contrary, it is instead intended to illustrate Rices ability to craft stories featuring characters who, on the one hand, are very similar to us, but who, on the other hand, are decidedly unlike us. These c

24、haracters are, simultaneously, better than we are and worse than we are. Rices elegant monsters, such as the vampire Lestst or the immortal Ramses are appealing because they embody such strikingly contrasting personality traits. (Gary and Ray Broadus, 1996: 2-3)Modern vampires are often sympathetic

25、in human ways. The figure of the vampire, can tell us about sexuality, of course, and about power; it can also inscribe more contemporary concern, such as relations of power and alienation, attitudes toward illness, and the definition of evil at the beginning of an unprecedented secular century. And

26、 it can help to clarity the nature of the fantastic realities that seem occasionally to overwhelm the empirical. (Gordon and Hollinger, 1997: 3) Chinese scholars also make a study in the area of vampire and translate some representative works of the vampire. Many scholars consider that vampire

27、has become, to a large extent, an alternative human language that exposes peoples worry and anxiety. Just as S. P. Somtow defined “Vampires are the Physical embodiment of human unconscious terror, longing and passion” (qtd. in Hong Ling, 1996: 101). Therefore, the topics of vampire are always depend

28、ent on several strong subjects such as disease, death, sexual and religious feelings (Zhu Xiaolei, 2002: 6).Shu Gengxin, the associate professor of English department of Beijing University does a research on Gothic novel. He has paid special attention to studying the writing mode of Anne R

29、ice. He said Anne Rice vampire works can be called anti-classic gothic novel. Vampires in her works describe their life and feel in the first- person perspective. This non-traditional narrative mode wins the sympathy of readers for the alternative objects. The exchange of the human and the role of v

30、ampires demonstrate the relativity of moral and social norms (2003: 67-72). 2. Existing Problems in the ResearchThe subject of vampire has been studied by quite a lot of scholars in western countries. Many scholars have carried out researches on the topics of vampires, especially for Anne Rices work

31、s. From the criticisms mentioned above, it can be seen clearly that scholars have carried out researches on the points of view in Rices works and they have made some progress in this aspect. However, an undeniable fact is that so far no critic has ever discussed the points of view in Rices works abo

32、ut human traits systematically. Most of their attention is paid on the style of vampire works or the fascinating ideas of the works. There is little attention on human traits refracted from the vampires.Actually, Rices vampire works can be interpreted to show the theme and the writers conscious abou

33、t society, reality and the ultimate questions of the human being. Vampires in contemporary popular fiction touch a range of contemporary issues: AIDS, homoerotism, loss of faith, with which readers are generally familiar, especially the vampires from Anne Rice. Nowadays, although some of the represe

34、ntative works of the vampire literature have been already imported and translated in China, there seems little scholarly research on it, or even no. Since the image of the vampire is the projection of human beings in reality, and their paradoxical situation mirrors the tensions and contradictions both in our civilization and in human itself, its very necessary for u