2025, Vol.38, No.3

Journal of Modern English Drama 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.21

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

This study analyzes the leitmotif structure of the musical Les Misérables and examines the mode of musical mediation embodied in the relationship between Jean Valjean and Cosette. While previous research has largely focused either on the adaptation process from Victor Hugo’s novel or on Valjean’s narrative structure, this research interprets the symbolic significance of the widely recognized “Little Cosette” poster image through the musical language of the work. To this end, a parallel analysis is conducted of both the stage musical and its film adaptation. Given the characteristics of the sung-through musical form, this study traces the recurrence and transformation of leitmotifs associated with Jean Valjean, Fantine, Éponine, Cosette, and Marius, drawing on specific timestamps from the film. Valjean’s identity evolves―shifting from prisoner to mayor, father, and ultimately to a saint-like figure―primarily through the two central leitmotifs of “Look Down” and “Who am I.” Within this process, Cosette serves as the medium through which love and devotion are realized, embodying Valjean’s enactment of the grace he once received from Bishop Myriel. This musical transference linking Fantine and Éponine, Marius, and Javert forms an ethical chain of love, devotion, and forgiveness. It constructs a musical drama where the motif of salvation, which began with the Bishop, expands through Valjean’s encounter with Cosette to encompass the broader society. Cosette, therefore, is not merely a passive figure in need of protection but the central axis of the salvific narrative that enables Valjean to fulfill his role as a practitioner of divine love. By tracing the distribution and variation of character-based leitmotifs, the study demonstrates how music structurally organizes interpersonal relationships and transformations of identity. Furthermore, by linking the external semiotics of performance (the poster image) with the internal musical structure, this research proposes an integrative analytical approach applicable to musical theatre studies.

In the 21st century, the debate over whether genomes and DNA sequences are human or non-human has shifted from the realm of biology to the realms of ethics, data science, and posthuman philosophy. Genetic testing now operates within a digital framework that transforms biological life into data. From an ethical perspective, this shift raises urgent questions about ‘informed consent’ and the boundaries of human identity. In his book Homo Deus, Harari argues that human civilization has always been sustained by shared fictions—stories that provide symbolic coherence to chaotic data. However, Harari warns that in the age of dataism, a worldview that views the universe as a flow of information rather than a realm of meaning, these narratives are being replaced by data. The genome is no longer a human story, but a data set. In this sense, Deborah Zoe Laufer’s play Informed Consent (2015) reveals that the conflict over DNA ownership within the Havasupai tribe is not simply about data itself, but about storytelling, staging a conflict between two anthropological paradigms. This paper, through Harari’s analytical framework, seeks to illuminate how the conflicts among the characters in Informed Consent manifests as a microcosm of a larger epistemological shift within humanity, a clash between the narrative meaning of humanism and the logic of dataism.

This paper investigates the dual endings of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan with special attention to the one-act play When Wendy Grew Up: An Afterthought (1908), a text that has been largely marginalized in scholarship. Situating Barrie’s work within the framework of British stage censorship (1737-1967), this study contends that the repeated alteration of the ending—from the 1904 censored script to the 1904-1907 performance and finally to the 1908 afterthought—reveals Barrie’s evolving negotiation against institutional censorship proposing a reevaluation of this one-act play. Through comparative analysis of the licensed manuscript, performance texts, and extant archival records, this study argues that the familiar theatrical ending —Wendy’s return home and Peter’s eternal youth—reflects not Barrie’s artistic intention but the constraints imposed by the licensing system. In contrast, the one-act play When Wendy Grew Up: An Afterthought (1908) restores elements removed from the 1904 licensed script, including critiques of middle-class domesticity, the fragility of educational ideals, and the gendered asymmetry that structures the labor of care.