The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux's Novel and its Progeny Review

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The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux's Novel and its Progeny ReviewHogle's book is written using dense professorial obsurantism. Readers will need an outstanding education and exceptional literary sensitivity to understand what the good professor is trying to exposit. One professional reviewer stated that the author's approach to his subject was "strenuous and original". I couldn't agree more. "Strenuous" completely describes not only this work but also the process of deciphering what it is that Hogle has to say. While it is an in depth and intensely researched look at the implications of this story for western society throughout the past century, it trades psychological insight into the cultural phenomenon for a more contextual social analysis. The personal psychological impact of the story for readers is something he seems to approach only distantly. Unfortunate, because this would give greater insight into the larger social ramifications. Also, Hogle can be repetitive with themes during the course of his analysis of the subject. I have praise only for his commentary on the original Leroux novel, which is insightful and meaningful. His commentary on the remainder of re-adaptations of the original novel ranges from good to weak. This is nowhere more apparent than in his discussion of what he calls, "the most important... renovelization of the original book" referring to the novel by Susan Kay. Here he attempts to prove, in less than four pages, a thesis that is both absurd and ill supported, despite the importance he himself has attributed to the work. Overall, his book is something that those persons enraptured with the story should avoid and that literary scholars should approach with appropriate discernment.The Undergrounds of the Phantom of the Opera: Sublimation and the Gothic in Leroux's Novel and its Progeny OverviewThis comprehensive analytical study of the Phantom of the Opera 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 of its major adaptations. Using extensive historical and textual evidence and drawing on perspectives from several theories of cultural studies, 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, Fruedian psychology, economic and international tensions, and especially the shifting and permeable boundaries between "high" and "low" culture. This book should interest all students of the history of Western culture, Gothic fiction, opera, musical theater, and film.

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