Chapter 3 - Goethe’s Faust

Summary

After tracing the debasement of the Faust legend in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the Faust story was dramatized in truncated revivals of Marlowe’s play and in puppet shows throughout Europe, Chapter III focuses on Goethe’s recuperation of Faust in his monumental two-part drama, a phantasmagoric epic that defies all genric classification. Chapter III compares Goethe’s masterpiece to Marlowe’s tragedy and demonstrates how each play mirrors the Zeitgeist of its own historical period as well as the vision of its creator. However, no matter how different the ethos animating these two versions of the Faust story, Goethe’s drama continues the innovations introduced by Marlowe, creating one of the great interrogative dramas of all times. As with Marlowe’s tragedy, Goethe offers two contrary readings of his hero and his quest, one celebratory, one ironic. After seeking to guide the reader through the mountain of scholarship on the drama, I conclude that, as with Marlowe’s play, Goethe’s masterpiece validates both the celebratory and ironic readings, balancing both interpretations with stunning equipoise as it convincingly argues on both sides of the question.