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Celtic Vampires: Neil Jordan’s Film Byzantium as Irish Neomyth
James Aubrey
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.07.008
Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, USA
Director Neil Jordan’s 2013 film Byzantium is a vampire narrative with a female empowerment theme that attains the status of Irish neomyth. Although much of the story takes place in England, the vampires originate in southwest Ireland, recognizable in filming locations and from historical allusions, Catholic religious references, Gaelic speech acts, traditional Irish songs, imagery from Celtic mythology, and a title that invokes a relevant Yeats poem with the title “Byzantium.” Such references to Irish culture elevate the supernatural mother-daughter protagonists to modern mythic status in their centuries-long conflict with an Ireland-based, patriarchal vampire Brotherhood.
vampire, myth, film, feminism, Irish
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