The Vampiric and the Urban Space in Dalton Trevisan's O vampiro de Curitiba

Dalton Trevisan, one of the preeminent short story writers of contemporary Brazilian letters, demonstrates a preoccupation with revealing the grotesque and horrific underside of modern urban life. Through an analysis of his works this paper attempts to demonstrate the vital link between the urban space and representations of the vampire and the vampiric. Comparisons with nineteenth-century literary representations of the vampire reveal a fear and pessimism toward Brazil's emerging cities and towards the government's official project of modernization. Brazil's growing metropolises rather than curing its economic and social ills are shown to be replicating its authoritarian and feudal past on multiple levels.