"Strange corpses" : Magyar elite discourse about popular belief in the undead, 1717-1922

Abstract

This thesis examines belief in the undead in the Kingdom of Hungary from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the start of the twentieth century. It focuses on the relationship between the intellectual elite and superstitious beliefs surrounding reanimated corpses. The research reveals that Hungarian elites did not relegate superstitious belief to a backward, enchanted past. On the contrary, the revenant played an important role in defining the contested boundary between life and death, which was problematized by both Hungary’s religious pluralism and the struggle between modern medicine and folk healing. By associating the undead with epidemics of plague and cholera in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, intellectual elites legitimized the belief in the returning dead and shaped the way medical institutions addressed disease and death. In the second half of the nineteenth century, one might have expected superstitious beliefs to decline and rational, disenchanted discourse to increase. However, irrespective of scientific advancements, the belief in revenants endured in popular culture and even in some form in elite discourse. The eastern borderland of the Habsburg Empire had a unique history of undead belief that inspired sensational forms of enchantment, such as the figure of the Vampire, that spilled out of the sphere of folklore into popular print and scientific discourse. Far from achieving the Enlightenment goal of overcoming irrational superstition, the vampire demonstrates how new forms of enchantment emerged instead.