French Literature Reviews - 2026

Stella Louis, L’Illusion du vampire
Comparative and World Literature

The figure of the vampire has always interacted with fiction and superstition to captivate readers and audiences alike. Literary texts, paintings, and cinematic works illustrate the various discourses and imagery surrounding the vampire, evolving over time alongside the emergence of new media.

Evoking pleasure, horror, fear, or fascination, they persistently raise the question of illusion. A lost soul, an empty body, a void—the vampire is fundamentally a mirror-like space that prompts us to question both what is projected (blood, life, dreams, the self, libido, the absolute in its most elusive form, the sublime) and the very act of projection, including cinema itself, conceived simultaneously as a variation of the vampiric motif and a process that absorbs the viewer's attention.

This book aims to uncover the trajectory of this deceptive vampiric writing. Spanning centuries and various geographical spaces, it develops a genetic, historical, and aesthetic perspective, because the illusion of the vampire—which outlines an identity and spreads through a principle of contamination—cannot be conceived without a distinct vampiric art.

Table of Contents:

Preface by Antoine de Baecque

Dedication
Epigraph
Preface: A Revolt of Style, by Antoine de Baecque

Introduction

Part One - Establishing a Literature of Belief in Vampires

I - "Pre-Vampires" and Historical Vampires
II - Gazes, Realities, and Fiction(s)
III - Making the Vampire Believable in 19th-Century Literature

Part Two - Staging the Belief in the Vampire (Dracula): Imaging Doubt

IV - The Uncanny: The Intrusion of Doubt Within Belief
V - The Absence of a Reflection: Dracula as a Mirror of the Soul
VI - The Metamorphoses of Shadow: Belief and Ostentation
VII - The Vampiric Cycle and the Return of the Same (Conclusion)

Part Three - Belief on the Other Side of the Screen: The Vampirization of the Spectator

VIII - Repetition and Rewriting: The "Other Vampires" as the First Spectators of Dracula's Fiction
IX - Truth(s) of the Vampiric Image and Contaminated Spectator Gazes

Conclusion: Do They Really Exist?

Epilogue
Sources
Index of Names
List of Illustrations
Credits

The vampire figure has long occupied an intersection between popular superstition and artistic representation, functioning as a recurring motif across diverse media and cultural traditions. Within the broader study of fantastic literature and visual culture, the creature often serves as a reflexive medium through which anxieties concerning desire, mortality, and spectatorship are articulated. By examining how these uncanny narratives develop across centuries, scholars in the humanities frequently investigate the ways fictional monsters mirror underlying psychological and aesthetic preoccupations of their respective eras, engaging with the mechanisms of illusion and belief that sustain them.

Readers interested in the history of the fantastic and the intersections between literature and visual media may find this volume relevant. The page notes that this book aims to uncover the trajectory of deceptive vampiric writing by spanning centuries and various geographical spaces, developing a genetic, historical, and aesthetic perspective. The volume illustrates various discourses and imagery surrounding the vampire, evolving over time alongside the emergence of new media while exploring how texts and images evoke pleasure, horror, fear, or fascination.