FANTASTIC SILVER COIN 0.999 WITH COLORED GLASS INLAY
Mythical Creatures: The Vampire
While even folkloric vampires of the Balkans and Eastern Europe had a wide
range of appearance ranging from nearly human to bloated rotting corpses, it was
interpretation of the vampire by the Christian Church and the success of vampire
literature, namely John Polidori's 1819 novella.
The Vampyre that established the archetype of charismatic and sophisticated
vampire; it is arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th
century, inspiring such works as Varney the Vampire and eventually Dracula. The
Vampyre was itself based on Lord Byron's
unfinished story "Fragment of a
Novel", also known as "The Burial: A Fragment", published in 1819. However, it
is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula that is remembered as the quintessential
vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. Dracula
drew on earlier mythologies of werewolves and similar legendary demons and "was
to voice the anxieties of an age", and the "fears of late Victorian
patriarchy".The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still
popular in the 21st century, with books, films, video games, and television
shows.
The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary
historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative
safety of nightmare fantasy". Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood
or flesh of the living have been found in nearly every culture around the world
for many centuries.
Today, we would associate these entities with vampires, but in ancient times,
the term vampire did not exist; blood drinking and similar activities were
attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood The notion
of vampirism has existed for millennia; cultures such as the Mesopotamians,
Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, aand Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are
considered precursors to modern vampires.
However, despite the occurrence of
vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the
entity we know today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from
early-18th century southeastern Europe, when verbal traditions of many ethnic
groups of the region were recorded and published.
In most cases, vampires are
revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be
created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a
vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused
mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires
Specifications
Country: Fiji
Issuing Year: 2012
Face Value: 10 Fijian Dollars
Metal: Silver 0.999
Diameter: 54 x 32 mm
Weight: 20 g
Condition: Satined
Mintage: 1,000 pieces
Speciality: Coin with glass inlay
