Since the 21st century, Chinese original musicals have evolved beyond the initial stage of adopting Western forms, moving toward reconstructing the nation's historical experiences and cultural memories through the language of stage art. In particular,...
Since the 21st century, Chinese original musicals have evolved beyond the initial stage of adopting Western forms, moving toward reconstructing the nation's historical experiences and cultural memories through the language of stage art. In particular, the Long March of the Red Army, as one of the most symbolically significant events in Chinese revolutionary history, has been repeatedly represented across various artistic genres including literature, film, theater, and musicals. Such representations are understood not merely as historical narratives conveying objective facts, but as cultural practices that reconstruct the collective memories and emotions shared by a community within a contemporary context. However, existing research has primarily focused on ideological messages and narrative typology, leaving insufficient examination of how national identity is formed within the actual structure of lyrical texts. Against this backdrop, *Wang Er's Long March* draws scholarly attention as a work that narrativizes the Long March through the perspective of an ordinary figure named Wang Er rather than a historical hero, thereby illustrating the process through which national identity is gradually formed through the mediation of individual experience and emotional transformation.
This study aims to analyze the lyrics of all 19 songs from the Chinese original musical *Wang Er's Long March*, applying Benedict Anderson's theory of 'Imagined Communities' to examine the patterns of narrative representation of national identity in the work. The imagined, limited, and sovereign elements proposed by Anderson were established as analytical categories constituting national identity, and the analysis was conducted focusing on the narrative structure and patterns of repetition within the lyrical texts. The concept of 'narrative representation' used in this study is distinguished from the musicological concept referring to the recapitulation of musical form. Here, narrative representation refers to the way in which individual experiences and emotions are organized within a narrative structure as lyrics are performed as songs, thereby forming communal sentiment and collective recognition.
The findings of the analysis are as follows. First, national identity in the lyrics of *Wang Er's Long March* was found to be formed not through direct presentation of ideological declarations or political slogans, but gradually through a narrative development that begins with a personal event of letter delivery and progresses through the accumulation of literacy learning and lived experience. The narrative of the work formed a structure in which a revolutionary narrative unfolding against the historical backdrop of the Long March, a heroic narrative depicting Wang Er's individual process of cognitive transformation, and a collective narrative formed through comradeship and communal action mutually intersect.
Second, across all 19 songs, the imagined, limited, and sovereign elements were confirmed to coexist simultaneously, while a overlapping and variable structure was identified in which a specific element appears centrally in each song while the remaining elements operate in a supplementary form. The imagined element functioned as an emotional foundation forming communal recognition through collective utterance and emotional simultaneity. The limited element was manifested through linguistic structures such as the distinction between friend and foe, qualifications for utterance, and confirmation of belonging, establishing the boundaries and internal norms of the community. The sovereign element was structured not through declarative slogans but through the accumulation of mission acceptance, ethical choice, and sustained action, forming the community's sense of agency.
Third, the revolutionary, heroic, and collective narratives performed the role of representing national identity within a structure mutually connected with the imagined, limited, and sovereign elements. The relationship between the three narratives and three elements was confirmed to be not a fixed correspondence but a variable structure in which specific elements function predominantly at each narrative level while the remaining elements operate in an overlapping manner.
The results of this study demonstrate that Chinese original musicals function not merely as a performance form reproducing revolutionary history, but as an artistic genre that narratively organizes the process through which communal recognition and national identity are formed. Furthermore, this study holds significance in that it applied the theory of Imagined Communities to the analysis of musical lyrics, systematizing the imagined, limited, and sovereign elements as criteria for textual analysis, thereby presenting a research perspective for analyzing the formation of national identity in original musicals.