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The Vampire: A Casebook

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The Vampire: A Casebook

By: Alan Dundes
Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin
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About this listen

Finally, the truth about vampires.

Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood.

The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word "vampire"; Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire has been and continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it - in reality or in fiction. The book is published by University of Wisconsin Press.

©1998 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks Customs & Traditions Eastern Europe Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Social Sciences Fantasy Fiction Tradition Mythology

Critic reviews

" The Vampire is a winner.... Alan Dundes is a truly remarkable scholar." (Wolfgang Mieder, author of The Politics of Proverbs)
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This is a subject I long wanted to read more about. There is a lot of information about folk tales and slavik customs in relation to vampires (which take a wide variety of shapes - very interesting). Unfortunately, the narrator's strange way of delivering the text makes it at times quite hard to follow and assimilate the meaning. It would help if she would every now and then lower her voice to denounce the end of a sentence, but alas, she just carries on regardless. Sometimes, her tone of voice reminds me of someone reading a fairy tale to a small child. Rather off-putting. Especially in a non-fiction book.
Maybe I will give the paper version another chance though.

Interesting book, shame about the narrator

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Who might you have cast as narrator instead of Marguerite Gavin?

Anyone, really. She was so terrible, cutting bits out from the original text which she clearly didn't want to read, skimming over terms without bothering to read out their English counterparts, misreading certain words (yes, misreading), being monotone, and so dull. There were parts when she was reading when I thought she was about to start laughing at what she was saying, that's how ridiculous the narration was. Furthermore, I felt like she was trying to speedread her way through the text as quickly as possible, without inflection or pause. Literally the worst narrator I've had to listen to, and a real shame too, because the content was a pleasure to read.

Terrible, terrible narrator

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Is there anything you would change about this book?

I think the topic and text was good but I just could not listen to the reader, I managed the first few chapters before returning it. I plan to buy for my kindle.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The vampire.

What didn’t you like about Marguerite Gavin’s performance?

Not easy to listen too, very mono tone and dry.

Did The Vampire: A Casebook inspire you to do anything?

Buy the real thing

Interesting but unengaging

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