Drink of me, and you shall have eternal life: an analysis of Lord Byron's The Giaour and the Greek folkloric vampire

This paper contains an examination of the impact of the Vampire Hysteria in Europe during the 1700’s on Lord Byron's “The Giaour.” Byron traveled to the continent in 1809 and wrote the poems that came to be known as his Oriental Romances after overhearing what would become “The Giaour ” in “ one of the many coffee-houses that abound in the Levant.” The main character, the Giaour, has characteristics typical of the Greek vampire, called vrykolakas. The vamping of characters, the cyclic imagery, and the juxtaposition of life and death as it is expressed within the poem are analyzed in comparison to vampiric folklore, especially that of Greece.