‘Who Tells Your Story?’: Narrative Theory, Public Memory, and the Hamilton Phenomenon

The popularity of Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical Hamilton has been unprecedented. Hamilton tells the story of the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, a founding father who, until recently, was often forgotten in American public memory. Miranda's unique musical, which fuses an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century story with contemporary music and text, features actors of various races and genders in order to tell the story of ‘America then’ by and for ‘America now’. Through a close textual analysis of the musical's script, cast recording, and sheet music, Valerie Lynn Schrader uses narrative theory to explore how Hamilton creates public memory of one of the lesserknown US founding fathers. She argues that, through the narrative paradigm, Hamilton creates what narrative theorist Walter Fisher refers to as ‘public moral argument’,1 through which audience members can discern life lessons, or ‘equipment for living’,2 for their own lives. Finally, the article suggests that the rhetorical theory of Burkean identification may play a role in how public memory of Hamilton's story is formed and how audience members learn life lessons from the musical. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications Arts and Sciences at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.

‘Another National Anthem’: Public Memory, Burkean Identification, and the Musical Assassins

In this article Valerie Lynn Schrader examines the musical Assassins through the rhetorical lenses of public memory and Kenneth Burke's theory of identification. Offering a close textual analysis of the musical's script and cast recording, she argues that Assassins, along with its audiences, serves to co-create a public memory of the men and women who attempted to assassinate Presidents of the United States of America. Her article contends that Assassins creates a chilling consubstantiality between the characters in the musical and theatregoers through Burkean identification, which may cause cognitive dissonance for many audience members. Through identifying key themes in the musical, she argues that these both connect with the assassins' motives and are common human experiences, serving not only to create public memory of the stories, but also to humanize the assassins and create a bond between audience and characters – while the song ‘Something Just Broke’ undermines this connection and encourages audience members to identify with the mourning American public. Valerie Lynn Schrader is Associate Professor of Communications and Interim Director of Academic Affairs at the Schuylkill Campus of the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on rhetorical messages in theatre works, especially musical theatre productions. She is herself a classically trained lyric soprano/soubrette.