CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Mézes, Ádám |
|---|---|
| Title | Insecure boundaries: Medical experts and the returning dead on the Southern Habsburg borderland |
| Summary | The essay deals with reports about vampirism on the southern Habsburg borderland in the first half of the 18th century. Through mapping the spheres of authority exerted by medical and administrative institutions on the actors who had to face vampire cases (various medical experts, soldiers,cameral officials etc.), the essay argues that the special administrative circumstances of the southern borderlands had a crucial role in making these cases visible for both government and intellectual circles in Europe. At the same time, in the lack of clear-cut central policies relating to vampirism, the same circumstances gave great freedom of interpretation and space of movement for the actors involved. The essay contains several detailed maps of the regions in question, and strives to clear up certain factual and textual misconceptions which plague much of secondary literature on the topic; this way, it can also serve as a useful basis for further research in vampirism. The focus is on two sets of vampire cases. First, reports about the two most well-known cases of Habsburg Serbia are examined: that of the civilian village of Kisilova in 1724/5 and the case which happened in the Hayduk village of Medvedia in 1731/2. The second group of cases took place in the Banat in the 1750’s and were investigated and reported on by Georg Tallar in his Visum Repertum. Both sections trace closely the factual (geographical, chronological and textual) aspects of the vampire cases, describe the administrative spheres in which these cases took place and distinguish the tasks which different actors had to pursue. |
| Supervisor | Kontler László, Klaniczay Gábor |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/mezes_adam.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University