Serenum mortis or the coming youth literature

From a vampire as literary germ to the vampirizing postmodernity of the 21st century

Abstract

Young adult fiction of the 21st century strives to recycle discursive structures and characterizations of characters, while reconverting and adapting its aesthetic principles to the supposed needs of today’s young prosumer; that is, a consumer and producer of content at the same time due to the mass media influence. In this situation, some of the themes whose meaning seemed to have been consolidated are subjected to defining tensions capable of leading to the opposite of what they symbolized in their original model: good and evil, life and death, monsters and heroes... Our research aims at analysing the metamorphosis of a vampiric germ in postmodern juvenile receivers/readers. For this purpose, an analytical and comparative study is proposed. The first one searches for a plausible definition of the primordial archetype-prototype of the ‘vampire’ concept, which is elaborated from a folkloric, artistic and literary triangulation; whereas the second one applies a comparative formula that compares past and present in real texts. For example, the main character of Dracula (by Bram Stoker) is compared to Edward Cullen, protagonist of the Twilight saga (by Stephanie Meyer).