"Blood Suckers Most Cruel:" The Vampire and the Bat In and Before Dracula

Abstract

The relationship between the nineteenth century vampire monster and the vampire bat has not yet been seriously investigated in English. Three common assumptions made by experts are examined in this paper. Current vampire historiography has held that Stokerʼs use of a huge bat as the vampire was either mistaken or a creative innovation and therefore requires explanation in those terms. It supposes that people in the nineteenth century understood the word "vampire" the way we do today. It presumes Dracula to be the first story to have a vampire monster transform into a bat. To consider these positions, we must first analyze the use of the bat in Dracula and then set it in the context of 19th-century conceptions of the vampire bat to see how mistaken or creative Stoker actually was. Thereafter a survey of 19th-century works that are said to be leading the way to Dracula is initiated to see if "vampire" had the same meaning then as it does today. Finally we will examine if Draculaʼs metamorphosis from a monster into a vampire bat had any precursors and, if so, how distinctive Stoker was in developing it.

Bats in Folklore and Culture: A Review of Historical Perceptions around the World

“…There is also, of course, the European connection with bats to vampirism. Vampires had been part of Slavic folklore in Eastern Europe since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but it was not until the nineteenth century that popular fictional literature, predominantly through Bram Stoker's "Dracula" in 1897, would forever tie bats and vampires together, with the protagonist, Count Dracula, being able to transform himself into a huge bat [13]. While the three species of true vampire bats (common vampire bat Desmodus rotundus, hairy-legged vampire bat Diphylla ecaudata, and white-winged vampire bat Diaemus youngi) are microbats, measuring just a few centimeters in length, it was the exaggerated reports from early explorers and adventurers that gave the public the image of these huge bloodsucking creatures.…”