NDSU's history, philosophy and religious studies department will present “Drinking the Blood Sacrifice: Aislings, Nationalism, and the Irish Vampire” by Jamieson Ridenhour, University of Mary, on Oct. 15 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the Memorial Union Room of Nations.
The aisling form was a favorite among 19th and early 20th century Nationalist writers who used it to romantically illustrate the need for the faithful to literally give their all for Ireland. The belief in what Padraic Pearse called a “sanctifying” blood sacrifice led to comparisons with the ultimate blood sacrifice: Christ’s giving himself for the purification of mankind.
The literary vampire also exacts a blood sacrifice and can similarly be read as Christ-metaphor — the vampiric act is an inversion of Catholic communion in which the Lord drinks the blood of his flock and offers a perversion of the immortality Christ promises. When infused with the contextual baggage of an Anglo-Irish writer fearful of the Nationalist impulse, the vampire story focuses all these ideas in a single glass, albeit, as Sheridan LeFanu reminds us, darkly.
Ridenhour will examine the intersection of the vampire story and the aisling, paying particular attention to how Anglo-Irish identity informs ideas of blood sacrifice. He draws on one of the most well known of Anglo-Irish vampire stories, Sheridan LeFanu’s “Carmilla,” to demonstrate how Irish Protestant writers of the 19th century turned Nationalist symbols to their own purposes.
Ridenhour is a scholar of Victorian Gothic literature at the University of Mary in Bismarck, N.D., where he is chair of the Division of Humanities. He earned his doctorate in Victorian literature from the University of South Carolina and has published essays on Charles Dickens, Iris Murdoch and Sheridan Le Fanu, as well as theater reviews and an interview with contemporary novelist, Leah Stewart. He has lectured in the United States and England on Victorian fiction and art, the life and works of Charles Dickens and the literary history of London. He recently finished a book-length study of the Victorian Urban Gothic novel. Ridenhour is the writer and director of the short film, “Cornerboys,” and editor of the 2009 Valancourt edition of Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella, “Carmilla.”
For more information on the presentation, contact Dennis Cooley at dennis.cooley@ndsu.edu or 1-7038.
