A 1994 scholarly edition of a major Renaissance text linked with Marlowe's Dr Faustus.

Analyzes Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, argues that the original text was subjected to religious censorship, and speculates on the original theme of the play

The Faustus myth, before being identified as a myth, was the folktale of a man named Faustus who lived in Germany. Underneath the popularity of this myth lies the basic human instinct to trespass the limits of traditional knowledge in pursuit of self-definition, authentic knowledge and power. This search and transgression also involve the desire to exercise the right of making free authentic choices. Faustus represents universal issues that are relevant for all human beings, which explains the reason why he has acquired mythic stature. Indeed, a most persistent myth has evolved, the appeal of which has led one writer after the other to reshape it. After his story became popular, he reappeared, even in contemporary culture, in different art forms such as literature, both high-brow and popular, including comics, the ballet and the opera. The real historical Faustus came onto the scene as a scholar and persistently reappeared in literature assuming different identities which, however, shared basically the same qualities. This book demonstrates and offers different perspectives to versions of the Faustus myth in literature: Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, Goethe’s Faust and John Fowles’ The Magus. The Faustus Myth is a cycle which starts and ends in tragic circumstances in Christopher Marlowe’s Renaissance Faustus, in salvation in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, and in meaninglessness, ambiguous collapses in John Fowles’ existentialist Nicholas Urfe.

This book is an interdisciplinary reader on the Faust theme in literature and music from the Reformation to the present. Essays by Faust scholars set the texts in context. Peter Werres introduces the collection with The Changing Faces of Dr. Faustus. Osman Durrani and Gerald Strauss discuss contexts of the Faust Book, given in the English translation The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus. David Wootton compares Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and the English Faust Book. Klaus L. Berghahn’s analysis of transformations of the theme and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance announcements contextualize the popular Puppet-Play of Doctor Faust. Works of Faustian music include the ballad The Just Judgment of God shew’d upon Dr. John Faustus, Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, and Gounod’s Faust. Essays by Henry Bacon and Steven R. Cerf engage the Faust theme in Romantic music and twentieth-century opera. Osman Durrani introduces 19th-Century American Fausts, represented by Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, and excerpts from Ethan Brand and Melville’s Moby Dick. Faust themes in the 20th and 21st centuries are represented by Valéry’s My Faust, Shapiro’s The Progress of Faust, Osman Durrani’s overview of Faust globalized, and Paul M. Malone’s work on the Faust theme in rock opera. A reading list is included.

The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as Doctor Faustus, is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, based on German stories about the title character Faust, that was first performed sometime between 1588 and Marlowe's death in 1593. Two different versions of the play were published in the Jacobean era, several years later.The powerful effect of early productions of the play is indicated by the legends that quickly accrued around them-that actual devils once appeared on the stage during a performance, "to the great amazement of both the actors and spectators", a sight that was said to have driven some spectators mad.

This new edition of Dr. Faustus presents the play in its original spelling with extensive commentary and textual apparatus. Based on the edition of 1604, the book includes an introduction that presents a new theory of the text and its transmission, and appendices that outline differenttheories of the text and provide both the alternative passages from the 1616 edition and extracts from The English Faustbook, which was the play's principal source.

A guide to reading "Doctor Faustus" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

This edition of Doctor Faustus features annotated versions, with modernized spelling and punctuation, of the 1604 A-text and the 1592 text of Marlowe's source, the English Faust Book--a translation of the best-selling Historia von Johann Fausten published in Frankfurt in 1587, which recounts the strange story of Doctor John Faustus and his pact with the spirit Mephistopheles. David Wootton's Introduction charts Marlowe's brief, meteoric career; the delicate social and political climate in which Doctor Faustus was staged and the vexed question of the religious sensibilities to which it may have catered; the interpretive significance of variations between the A and B texts; and the shrewd and subversive uses to which Marlowe put the English Faust Book in crafting, according to Wootton, a drama in which orthodox Christian teaching triumphed, but in which Faustus has all the best lines.