Somnambulism and Trance States in the Works of John William Polidori, Author of<i>The Vampyre</i>

Abstract

English physician John William Polidori (1795–1821) is today best known as the author of The Vampyre (1819) and as the traveling companion of Lord Byron. Less appreciated is Polidori’s interest in somnambulism and trance states, the subjects of his 1815 medical thesis at the University of Edinburgh. Until now, this little‐known document existed only in the original Latin. This essay draws upon a new English translation of the thesis in order to demonstrate how Polidori’s medical writing responded to the influences of mesmerism and phrenology, while anticipating mid‐Victorian theories of “unconscious cerebration” developed by William Benjamin Carpenter and Thomas Laycock. Polidori’s interest in somnambulism carried over into his fiction. Lord Ruthven, the villain of The Vampyre, experiences trance‐like states and sensory lapses peculiar to somnambulists. These behaviors evoke Romantic‐era medical controversies surrounding the activity of the brain during sleep, as well as the potential conflict between higher faculties like the will or the soul and automatic brain functions that could be carried out without conscious awareness. By foregrounding such concerns, The Vampyre set the stage for the somnambulistic, hypnotic vampire villains of tales like Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897).