The English Teacher's Guide to the Hamilton Musical

Symbols, Allegory, Metafiction, and Clever Language

Valerie Estelle Frankel

• Publisher: LitCrit Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780463138748
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The high school or college English class offers a long list of technical terms: Symbolism, Irony, Metafiction, Allegory, Metaphor… With such a barrage, it can be tough to sort them all out. Yet here's the list, from Absurdity to Zeugma, all defined through the clever wordplay of Hamilton. In fact, musicals use all the rhythm and rhyme patterns of history's top poets, and the literary skill of crafting characters and straddling genre. Further, the rap battles reveal a list of logical fallacies and top argumentation strategies that could empower lawyers or speech writers at the level of this famed Founding Father. Going deeper, the book lists the themes, motifs, allusions, and so on of the show, revealing sneaky foreshadowing and subtle symbols. For die-hard fans of the show, or those mastering rhetorical terms, logic, and the power of words, it's a delightful geek guide.

The English Teacher’s Guide to the Hamilton Musical

Symbols, Allegory, Metafiction, and Clever Language

Valerie Estelle Frankel

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This book is an unauthorized analysis and commentary on Hamilton: An American Musical and its associated products. None of the individuals or companies associated with the movies, comics, television show or any merchandise based on this series has in any way sponsored, approved, endorsed, or authorized this book.

Copyright © 2017 Valerie Estelle Frankel

All rights reserved.

LitCrit Press

Print ISBN: 978-1548568832

Contents

Introduction

Rhetorical Devices

Rhyme

Rhythm

Expert Rhetorical Terms

Strategies for Argument

Logical Fallacies

Theme

Motifs

Allegory

Allusion

Foreshadowing

Metafiction

Characters

Conflict

Genre

Plot

Point of View

Symbolism

Works Cited

Introduction

The musical Hamilton is a delight, and fans have noticed the exceptionally clever language. Many know the story of its creation, rooted in literature:

When the composer, lyricist, and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda went on vacation in Mexico some seven years ago, he took Chernow’s tome as a beach read. A couple of chapters in, reading about Hamilton as a “poor boy from the West Indies [who] commanded attention with the force and fervor of his words,” Miranda saw—and more important, heard—the bragging, swaggering, word-spinning, quick-tempered men of the American Revolution synchronize with the hip-hop rhythms and run-ins that formed the popular sound track of his teen and early adult years. (Miranda was born in 1980.) Soon he was working on a mixtape that mashed up the founding fathers with beat-boxing bruthas. (Solomon)

As Miranda adds: “The moment that cemented it was reading about how Hamilton’s writing an essay gets him off the island [St. Croix].…I was like, ‘Oh, he literally wrote his way out of his circumstances. That’s it! That’s everything’” (Binelli). He saw himself and his immigrant family in this moment and continued picturing them. To Miranda this was “Jay Z, Eminem, Biggie. Lil Wayne writing about Katrina! And so, having had that insight very early while reading Ron Chernow’s book, I never pictured the literal Founding Fathers again” (Binelli).

This beloved adaptation reimagines the Founding Fathers as rebel rappers played by actors of color, exploring what in meant to be immigrants in a brand-new nation. This rewrite has already had an effect: Students noted of the recast Founding Fathers, “It just made me really proud, and feel good about being American. Like I belong here” (Hamilton: The Revolution, 159).

Meanwhile, critics call the musical “a gateway drug that animates a passion to learn more about its subjects, and not just their foibles and personalities but their ideas” (Smith). Certainly, Hamilton biographies, novels, and historical sites have gained a new appreciation. Fans of the musical are also trying other shows. Why not discover the literary terms of Hamilton as well?

Hamilton: An American Musical offers every rhythm and rhyme scheme in the English textbook, and so many more examples, with clever...

Table of contents

• Introduction