‘Twilight’ at 20: The theology of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire trilogy

The vampires of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga are undoubtedly unique. Never before had vampires been described as having sparkling, diamond-like skin in the sunlight, for example. But Meyer’s Twilight novels, the first of which turns 20 this year, also drew on a long vampiric tradition, with spiritual themes that were just as relevant 200 years ago as they are now.

The inspirations

Vampires in the Victorian era stood as a symbol of their time. They represented the questions of a society faced with the tension between new scientific discoveries and the spiritualist movement – a desire to unite the material to the immaterial, the immanent to the transcendent.

Decades later, the Twilight saga sought to answer the same questions for its own generation of readers. Just before the book was published in 2005, the cultural historian Christopher Partridge noted the rise of alternative spirituality in the west and a return to thinking of our existence as both physical and spiritual. Though institutional religion may have lost its former foothold in society, many began identifying as spiritual but not religious.

Twilight reflects this paradigm shift that resists limiting our perception of reality to just what we see with our eyes or comprehend with our intellect. By introducing modernised vampires to Forks,...

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