Like his Christian biblical twin Antichrist, the folk legendary Dr. Faustus has exercised a remarkably tenacious hold on the Western (i. e. Euro-American) imagination, finding his way into folk tales, great literary drama, opera, novels, films, video games, Gothic music, and pornography. Even our verbal expressions have been influenced by this legend: we speak of people making "Faustian bargains" or having "sold out" or "selling their souls" when they make a personal or professional compromise.In addition, Faust's absolute power evokes the similar claims made in medieval Antichrist legends, and in some accounts Faust travels to heaven and hell, the otherworldly journey of classic apocalypse texts.
In our first readings, you will explore some of the legends related to this figure who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge. Next week we will read and discuss a Faust play by one of the monumental figures of German philosophy and literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.I have intentionally assigned brief readings this week in order to let you get "up to speed"; you should begin now to read Goethe's Faust, which is a longish text. The Faust legend is instructive of the ways in which definitions of "literature" and "folk tradition" or "high culture" (e.
g. literature, opera) and "low culture" or "mass culture" or "popular culture" are often difficult to sustain. The legend inspired two great plays and two magnificent operas as well as several novels, while at the same time becoming a narrative motif in movies and television programs.Some definitions to begin with might be helpful. First, "legend" is a term for a narrative that falls somewhere between myth and history, usually relating an account about one specific figure; usually legends are based on some vaguely historical figure. Originally, the Latin word legenda meant a brief biography of a saint, whose lives were read to medieval monks while they ate meals.
Beowulf, King Arthur, and Robin Hood are legendary figures. Second, "folk literature" is a term for usually pre-literate, oral performances of folksongs, folk tales, ballads, fairy tales, plays, proverbs, riddles, charms, and legends.Folk tales, for example, usually include elements of the supernatural, often employing bargains between humans and supernatural beings. In the nineteenth and twentieth century many forms of folk literature have been recorded by scholars (like the Grimm brothers) and ethnologists or anthropologists (who study living cultures).
In becoming recorded, folk literature moves from a spontaneous performance (different on each occasion) to a fixed written text.Late in the European Reformation period (sixteenth century/1500s), the medieval legend of a man who sells his soul to the devil became associated with the historical figure of Johann Faust (ca. 488-1541) an alchemist and magician. The first published account of this legend occurred in 1587 in Historia von. D. Johann Fausten, which was quickly translated from the German into English.
This publication coincided with a European fascination with demonology that endured for a century or more, resulting in the witch hunts of Europe and New England, infamously in the Salem witch trials in 1692. Students from the first semester of the course, however, will remember how demonizing others is central to the ideologies behind apocalypticism.The English Renaissance playwright Christopher Marlowe immediately adapted this material for the stage in his play Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (ca. 1594; published 1604).
Dr. Faustus conjures Mephistopheles (a demon) with whom he agrees to surrender his body and soul to the Devil in exchange for limitless power and knowledge. When Faustus summonses the most beautiful woman who ever lived, Helen of Troy, we hear Marlowe's famous line: "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships/And burned the topless towers of Illium? After 24 years, however, Faust must surrender his body and soul.In the play's last scene, his scholar friends arrive at his chambers to find Faust's body parts torn and scattered around the room, his soul having been dragged to hell. Marlowe's play was performed in Germany (an interesting instance of a narrative having been translated from one language into another and back into the original), where it eventually became incorporated into popular comic puppet shows.Later 17th-century versions in two Spanish texts, Mira de Amescua's El esclavo del demonio (1612) and Guevara's El Diablo conjuelo (1641).
In the 18th and 19th centuries (1700s and 1800s), the Faust theme was revived in European literature and music. That this should be so during the 18th century Enlightenment, when the witch hunts had died down and educated Europeans were more interested in the material world explored by science than in the immaterial world postulated by religion, is something of a paradox.Nevertheless, Lesage's picaresque (an episodic comic novel of a hero's adventures) Le Diable boiteux (1707), an anonymous Dutch play De Hellevart von Doktor Ioan Faust (1731), Lessing's German Faustspiel (1759), and Paul Weidmann's play Johann Faust: ein allegorisches Drama (1775) were all products of the Age of Reason and led to Goethe's great drama. The English poet George Gordon Lord Byron composed his Manfred, a poetic drama about a Gothic hero who is tormented by his forbidden love for his sister. Manfred descends to the underworld where he has a vision of his sister, who promises him that he will die the next day.
Back in his mountain castle, Manfred is urged by a monk to repent, but he refuses and dies. Manfred demonstrates an interesting relationship between Romantic gothicism, a fascination with the anti-hero, and Romantic appropriations of apocalypticism. My conviction is that Gothic fiction is apocalypticism without God. Eroticism and damnation (always a central theme in ancient apocalyptic texts) is an apparent theme in the Faust legend. Faust seeks all sensations and experiences, including the erotic, even summoning the most beautiful woman ever to have lived, Helen of Troy.
In the 19th century the Faust legend became fused with the legend of Don Juan, the womanizer whose exploits are brought to a dramatic end when a statue comes to life and drags him down to hell. This narrative, like that of Faust, found its way into poetry, drama, and opera Ingrid Shafer's Web essay (see below) provides a very engaging and thorough discussion of precursors to Goethe's Faust. The English Faust Book is the Renaissance translation of the German book that provided the foundation for Marlowe's play. German fascination with this theme is also evident in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's film treatment earlier in the 20th century.
