THE FAUSTIAN MOTIF IN CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE'S DR. FAUSTUS
THE FAUSTIAN MOTIF IN CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE'S DR. FAUSTUS

Summary/Abstract: Anthony Burgess, in his study Shakespeare (1970), describes Marlowe's characters as liberated, free and independent from the constraints of medieval Christian dogmas, finally willing and ready to realize their enormous creative potentials and achieve their goals. However, Burgess also poses the question – what is this freedom for?- and quotes Eliot: 'this philosophy seems to raise man to a heroic level never before seen in literature, but actually reduces him to a status of a monster with great ingenuity, but no soul'. Marlowe's overreachers, as Harry Levin calls them, use this long-awaited freedom for destructive purposes: for the sake of obtaining military, political and monetary power, each of them intimately bound up with the power of the infinite and infinitely irresponsible knowledge embodied in Dr. Faustus's diabolic magic, which is the theme of this paper.

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