The Phantom of the Opera: Prehistory, Birth and Afterlife

Abstract

This thesis aims to provide a critical account of Gaston Leroux’s Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (1910), which has become one of the most enduring and visible of modern myths. Leroux’s text discloses anxieties about a rapidly changing world, and these anxieties manifest themselves artistically in a simultaneous fascination and horror with the emerging episteme. Leroux’s story subsequently took on a life of its own in popular culture, yet, this thesis argues, many of these adaptations remain bound up in the same issues of futurity and dichotomies of masculinity, as well as concerns about the role of the artist in determining the values of his society.