摘 要：《吸血鬼日记》根据美国女作家L.J.史密斯的同名小说改编而成。该电视剧让人物穿上了“吸血鬼”这个特殊的角色躯壳，讲述了Elena、Stefan 和Damon 三个人之间的爱情故事。本文从美剧《吸血鬼日记》入手，通过查阅相关吸血鬼资料和相关哥特文化内容，研究剧中吸血鬼的起源，形象特征和相关的哥特文化。吸血鬼的形象特点、其影响的宗教信仰、结合自身所代表的恐怖和神秘因素，加上中世纪宗教的神秘，融合在了吸血鬼的形象中，丰富了吸血鬼文化，使其成为西方文化的一部分。因此，希望通过对《吸血鬼日记》中相关文化因素分析，进一步了解西方吸血鬼起源和其文化内涵。

关键词：吸血鬼日记；哥特；西方文化

Abstract：Vampire Diaries is adapted from a novel writen by Amercian writer L.J. Smith. The drama which puts the coat of vampire on human is a story about love among three people. From the drama Vampire Diaries, this paper mainly studys the origin of the vampire drama, image features and the Gothic culture, through referring to the vampire and Gothic culture. The vampire culture is enriched by the combination of vampire image characteristics, the influence of religion, the horror and mystery factors, and the mystery of religion in the Middle Ages, which makes itself become a part of western culture. Therefore, this paper aims to study the origin of western vampires and their cultural significance by analyzing related factors in Vampire Diaries.

Key words: Vampire Diaries; Gothic; western culture

Contents

摘 要 i

Abstract ii

I. Introduction 1

II. The Origin of Western Vampire Diaries 2

2.1 Vampire Legend 2

2.2 The Existence of Real Vampires 3

2.3 The Vampire Image in Vampire Diaries 4

III. The Gothic Culture of Vampire Diaries 7

3.1 The Definition of Gothic 7

3.2 Gothic Elements 7

IV. The Youth Campus Elements in the Vampire Diaries 9

4.1 Free Love 9

4.2 Variety of Fashion Items 9

4.3 Heroism Elements 10

V. Conclusion 11

Bibliography 13

Acknowledgments 14

A Study on the Western Culture from Vampire Diaries

I. Introduction  

In many western legends of ghosts and goblins, vampires have been the favorite of the fiction writers and film directors. Many well-known writers such as Dickens wrote stories about vampires. Since the 20th century, the image of vampires has been filmed. From 1922, when Nosferatu was showed, there have been hundreds of vampire-related movies came out. With the movie series of Twilight gaining box-office success, a new vampire crazily hits again. True Blood, Vampire Diaries, and other TV series have been in hot pursuit suddenly, you can say “everybody loves a vampire.” In the current films and television dramas, the highest popular vampire images of audience, undoubtedly, have been Louis in Interview with the Vampire, Edward in Twilight, and Stephen in the US drama the Vampire Diaries. From them, we can see that these are no longer popular vampire novels or early vampire movies in which vampires have pointy ears and long fingernails leading to bloody killings, terror, weird images, and depression. In the contrast, vampires are similar to human beings, and full of human struggles. Vampire Diaries is a ghost story, as well as a human story actually. The vampire is non-God, no strange, but an independent existence of the species. In Chinese people’s opinion, they are the blood-sucking devils, and this ghost often vague without the presence of the entity. Vampires have a fixed image of the entity with its own will, and even have their own families, sects, beliefs and so on. Films become carrier of western culture, by making this image strike root in people’s hearts. For example, Twilight, Underworld, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Queen of the Damned, From Dusk Till Dawn, Interview with the Vampire, never satisfied, and Van Helsing. There are novels containing Secret sided Eve, Interview with the Vampire, Delakel, Vampire Chronicles and so on. Why there are so many legends about vampires in the west? Why vampire culture is so deeply rooted in western culture? Based on this cultural phenomenon, this paper is intended to explore answers to these questions.