Return of
the Vampires
and the 
Werewolves:
Yes, It's Twilight...

Part one of the final installment of Stephanie Meyer’s quadrilogy, that is the saga known as Twilight, is hitting a Cineplex near you. “Breaking Dawn” and the whole Twilight saga is only the latest manifestation of vampires in popular literature. It stretches back to the eighteenth century, hitting its zenith at the end of the nineteenth century with Bram Stoker’s masterpiece of the genre, "Dracula".

Since Dracula, there have been innumerable vampires- especially in cinema- but in literarature the most prominent include: Richard Matheson's ,"I Am Legend” which posits vampirism as the result of a biological plague- which in turn had a major influence on the zombie genre; Stephen King’s second novel (and his personal favorite), “Salem’s Lot” about a writer returning to the town of his youth to discover that the residents are becoming vampires and Anne Rice , whose "Interview With The Vampire" introduced us to Lestat de Lioncourt and the world to The Vampire Chronicles-the first of the modern vampire sagas- which has amassed upwards of 80 million sales worldwide.

Vampirism and vampire stories, going back before “Dracula”- have traditionally had a strong current of eroticism. In more modern texts, this has tended to be of the somewhat less than bridled variety: Laurell K. Hamilton is a leading exponent of this particular vein with her Anita Blake series. However, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga is a beast of a very different stripe. Citing influences that include "Jane Eyre", "Anne of Green Gables" , Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" and Shakespeare’s “ "Romeo and Juliet" , it is clear Bella Swan and Edward Cullen’s love is going to be a tad more buttoned down. However, there is no lack of emotion- repressed desire and passion are there- it's just a little more pressure-cooker than boiling cauldron in its presentation. And who can knock it? 116 million readers cannot be wrong, this is a winning formula.

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