This is an analytical study of The Phantom of the Opera in its many different versions from the original Gaston Leroux novel to the 21st century. It proposes answers to the question, why do we keep needing this story told and retold in the Western world? by revealing the history of deep cultural tensions that underlie the novel and each major adaptation. Extensive historical and textual evidence and drawing on perspectives from several theories of cultural study, this book argues that we need this tale told and reconfigured because it provides us ways to both confront and disguise how we have fashioned our senses of identity in the Western middle class. The Phantom of the Opera in varying ways over time turns out like the Gothic tradition it extends, to be deeply connected to Western self fashioning in the face of conflicted attitudes about class, gender, race, religious beliefs, Freudian psychology, economic and international tensions, and especially the shifting and permeable boundaries between high and low culture.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Palgrave USA
ISBN-13
9780312293468
eBay Product ID (ePID)
96593523
Product Key Features
Book Title
The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux's Novel and its Progeny