SOURCE: Twitchell, James B. “Shelley's Use of Vampirism in The Cenci.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 24 (1979): 120-33.

In the following essay, Twitchell studies Shelley's use of the vampire myth in the imagery of The Cenci.

The Cenci is certainly one of the most philosophically intricate works Shelley ever wrote. It is intricate in that Shelley set for himself the complex task of reconstructing historical events in a form that demands sequential as well as imaginative cohesion, and it is philosophical in that he deals with the problem of casuistry, the use of evil means for good ends.¹ It is a drama that shows through a fiction the real workings of evil: how evil is generated, how it is transferred, and how it can destroy and be destroyed. While one could say the same thing about The Cenci's companion piece, Prometheus Unbound, there is an important difference. Prometheus Unbound...