Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality | 
|  | | | Title: | Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality | | Author: | Paul Barber | | Publisher: | Yale University Press | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 25 July, 1988 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0300048599 / 9780300048599 | | List Price: | $19.00 | | You Save: | $1.90 | | Amazon Price: | $17.10 | |
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Customer Reviews:
• Really Interesting Tour Of Corpses 07 July, 2007
Warning: gross discussions of corpses, and the handling thereof, ahead.
It's good that Paul Barber can take his vampire studies with a bit of humor; I'd be sad if he had forgotten the comical roots of what became a very serious scholarly study of attitudes toward death. Hence in the middle of a very long and interesting section on what, specifically, happens to bodies after death, we have the footnote on page 163 that begins, "While we are dwelling on the unutterably loathsome . . . " and this one on 176: "I would guess that Giure Grando's cry resulted from the manipulation of the corpse but can really not say much about the matter, since I almost never have occasion to decapitate a corpse with a shovel."
The process of decomposition is endlessly fascinating -- something I realized vaguely, but not really in detail until I read Barber's book. For instance, it hadn't occurred to me that dumping a body in the water -- even with a good bit of weight -- is often not enough to keep it down; bacteria in the intestines produce a great quantity of methane, which often make the body swell to twice or three times its living volume. Hence if you really want to kill someone and dump his body in the water, you should slice open his stomach and intestines before you dump it; the gases will escape before they have time to puff up the body.
Barber's introduction suggests that physiological details such as these -- fun as they are -- weren't part of his original plan. He wanted to track down the roots of beliefs in vampires, which eventually led him to realize that belief in vampires comes from ignorance of disease. When your brother dies and then your sister, it's reasonable to think that your brother has come back from the dead to haunt your family, and that the corpse has killed your sister. This belief gains some plausibility if your sister has reported seeing visions of your brother in her sleep in the days immediately after his death. All of these facts may be explained in a purely materialistic way, and a lot of the mystery disappears with a good theory of germs.
Looking back on times of plague, especially, a lot of mysteries disappear if you realize how people are buried and why societies treat corpses the way they do. If many people are dying at once, gravediggers don't have the time to put the corpse six feet underground; they rush, and the body returns to the surface -- maybe because there was a flood, or because the body's natural bloating pushes the dirt away. It may well seem, then, that the body has "come back to life." Driving a stake into it can, indeed, solve a lot of problems -- bloating in particular. Burning the body is a decisive solution, but it's also very expensive; one of the more interesting nuggets in Barber's book is about the difficulty of burning a human body, especially on the scale needed during plague epidemics.
Vampires, Burial and Death rests on many such nuggets -- various facts about decomposition and the preparation of corpses. They're incredibly interesting, and have made me want to go read "Coroner" (which Barber cites), so long as it's something more than a potboiler.
Unfortunately, those nuggets don't hold together for a non-scholarly reader. The quantity of evidence amassed is quite impressive, and builds a convincing story. But it is repetitive in the extreme. I'm sure it contains no more mass than a death-studies scholar would demand, but for the general reader it could profitably lose 50% or 75% of its heft.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A35PLM0LLD0XM9
• Wonderful Book If You Enjoyed _stiff_ 02 December, 2005
Accessible yet scholarly (good notes, index, and bibliography), light to leaven the ick factor of the subject (decomposition), this is a nicely reasoned really neat book that makes one wonder if anyone was ever buried and just left alone in Middle Europe. Barber writes with affection and respect for the difficulties of the lives of rural people before the mechanics and microorganisms of decay were widely understood. I think people who like archaeology would enjoy this and find their understanding of burial customs widened or at least piqued. Get it. It's not revolting.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A38CYUH3PS5TL
• The Conclusive Treatment 20 May, 2006
This book solves the problem of widespread belief in vampires convincingly and conclusively. It accomplishes its goal by the simple yet innovative expedient of looking at the actual folkloric accounts of vampirism and comparing them to what we know about the decomposition of dead bodies. It turns out that, if left unembalmed, almost all dead bodies become "vampires" by the folkloric definition.
I'm giving you the short summation here. Barber's treatment is much more detailed. But, when you are finished examining it, you will know once and for all what vampires -- the ones that people actually used to believe in -- were all about.
This is by far the best book ever published on vampires. I'm very much surprised that it's not more popular. Maybe vampire romantics just can't face the truth.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A28X5OC8SG3JZE
• A Very Well Researched Book... 25 May, 2008
Many of the books on vampires that you find today will, in their bibliography, list Paul Barber's Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, as one of the many sources the author has used. In fact, I would say his work is a major source and is one everybody interested in vampires and folklore should read. The book follows a very logical and reasonable course, starting with the vampires and vampire scares of the 18th Century, and earlier. Then moving onto the subject of burial, how people are buried, why, where, so on. Then it moves onto death, what happens to the bodies after death, why and when it happens. By getting into the details, sometimes gross, sometimes very interesting, he can explain how vampires were born in the folklore of Europe. It is a fascinating read that, while sometimes making me a tad sick, could not be put down. I had to finish it no matter how grossed out I got.
A must for any library about vampires, death or folklore.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3NIQK6ZLYEP1L
• Stands Apart In The Field 25 June, 2006
This book stands apart in the field. It is a good reference for writers, anthropologists, psychologists, and public policy thinkers.
My copy was destroyed in a recent move-I am so glad that it has become so well recognized and I can easily replace my ruined copy. This is one for the shelves-or stacks- as it may be.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AXXHKZMD0C5OX
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