DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
(Maharajah Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University )
Name :- chintavankumar n bhungani
Semester:- m.a
sem 1
Roll no:- 06
Paper
no:- 01 .RENAISSANCE LITERATURE
Enrollment no:- PG15101006
Email id:-
cnbhungani7484@gmail.com
Bloge id:-
chintavanbhungani201517.blog.spot.com
Topic:- DOCTOR FASTUS AS CHARISTIAN TRGEDY?
ANSWER:
- Doctor
Faustus is a play by ChristopherMarlowe, the tragical history of the life and
death of doctor Faustus, commonly referred to simply as doctor Faustus based o
the German story Faustus .doctor Faustus was first published in 1604, eleven
years after Marlow’s death and at least ten years after the first performance
of the play. It is the most controversial Elizabethan play outside of Shakespeare,
with few critics coming to any agreement as to the date or the nature of the
next.
Christopher Marlowe
(baptized-26 February 1564-30 may 1593) was an English playwright, poet and translator
of the Elizabethan era, Marlowe
Was
the foremost “Elizabethan tragedian” of his day. He greatly influenced William
Shakespeare who was born in the same years as ,Marlowe and who born in the same
years as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright
after Marlowe’s mysterious early death . Marlowe’s plays are known for the use
of blank verse and their overarching protagonist.
v Marlowe’s
great plays:-
·
TAMBURLAINE
·
THE JEW OF MALTA
·
DOCTOR FAUSTUS
·
EDWARD II
·
THE MASSARE AT PARIS
·
THE SCHOOL FOR NIGHT
Ø ABOUT
FAUSTUS LEARNS NECROMANCY
As a prologue, the chorus
introduces us to Faustus and his story. He is described as being “baste of
stock” however he is able to become a doctor. During this opening we also
get our first clue to the source of Faustus’s downfall. Faustus’s tale is
linked to that of Icurus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to his
death when the sun melted his waxen wings .this is the hint to Faustus’s end as
well as bringing our attention to the idea of “hubris” which is represented in
the icurus and tory and ultimately Faustus.
Ø Why
doctor Faustus is a Christian tragedy? :-
Doctor Faustus has elements of
both Christian morality and classical tragedy. On the one hand, it takes place in
an explicitly Christian cosmos: god sits on high as the judge of the world, and
every soul goes either to hell or to heaven .there are devils and angels, with
the devils tempting people in to sin and the angels urging them to remain to
god. Faustus’s story is that tragedy in Christian terms, because he gives in to
temptation and his damned to hell. Faustus’s principal sin is his great pride and
ambition, which can be contrasted with the Christian virtueof humility; by
letting these traits rule is life, Faustus allows his soul to be claimed by
Lucifer , Christian cosmology’s prince of devils
Yet while the play seems
to offer a very basic Christian message- that one should avoid temptation and
sin , and ripened if one cannot avoid temptation and sin – its conclusion can
be interpreted as straying from orthodox Christianity in order to confirm to
the structured of tragedy. In a traditional tragic play, as pioneered by the
Greeks and imitated by William Shakespeare , heroes is brought low by an
error or series of errors and realize
his or her mistake only when it is too late. In Christianity,though, as long as
a person alive, there is always the possibility of repentance – so if a tragic
hero realizes his or her mistake, he or she may still be saved even at the last
moment. But though Faustus, in the final, wrenching scene, comes to his senses
and begs for a chance to repent, it is too late, and he is carried off to hell.
Marlowe rejects the Christian idea that it is never too late to repent in order
to increase the dramatic power of his finale, in which Faustus is conscious of
his damnation and yet,tragically, can do nothing about it.
“Why this is
not hell, nor I am out of it.
Think’st
thou I’ who saw the face of god,
And
tasted the eternal joys of heaven hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
Ø Magic
and the supernatural:-
The supernatural pervades doctor Faustus
,appearing everything in the story .angels and devils flit about, magic spells
are east, dragons pull chariots and even fools like the two ostlers ,robin and
rafe , can learn enough magic to summons
demons .still , it is worth nothing that nothing terribly significant is
accomplished through magic. Faustus plays tricks on people, conjures up grapes,
and explores the cosmos on a dragon, but he does not fundamentally reshape the
world. The magic power that Mephistopheles grants him is more like a toy than
an awesome, earth-shaking ability. Thermorethe, real drama of the play despite
all the super natural frill and pyrotechniques take place with in Faustus’s
vacillating the magic is almost incidental to the real story of Faustus’s
struggle with himself, whichMarlowe intended not as a fantastical battle but
rathe r as a realistic portrait of a human being with a will divided between
good and evil.
Theme also suggested that Christian story of
conflict between food and evil in the world and the woman soul.
Ø The
Good Angel and the Evil Angel
The
angles appear at Faustus’s shoulder early on in the play – the good angel
urging him to repent and serve God, the evil angel urging him to follow his
lust for power and serve Lucifer. The two symbolize his divided will, part of
which wants to do good and part of which is sunk in sin.
·
Theme Analysis:
One
of the most important and prominent themes in Doctor Faustus by far the
conflict between good and evil in the world and the human soul. Marlowe’s play
set the precedent for religious works that were concerned with morals and
suffering. In the play, Doctor Faustus is frequently accompanied by two angles,
one good and one evil. Both spirits try to advise him on a course of action,
with the evil one usually being more influential over his mind. These two
angels embody the internal battle that is raging inside of Faustus. On one hand
he has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and supremepowers, on the hand,
Faustus realize that it is folly to relinquish heavenly pleasures for fleeting
mortal happiness.
Ø Theme
of pride :-
The major theme of
doctor Faustus is the pride which goes to a fall. Faustus sin is not his
practice of necromancy, but his denial of god’s power and majesty.
His pride is the source of his damnation. All the other sins committed by him
are various aspects of the sin of pride. Even his despair in the last scene of
the play is another aspect of his pride because it prevents him from asking for
god’s forgiveness. Faustus despair denies god’s mercy.
Ø Minor
theme is Faustus quest for knowledge :-
One of the play’s minor themes is
Faustus quest for knowledge .he examines all the orthodox branches of knowledge
and finds them wanting. He chooses magic, for it promises “a world of profit
and delight, /of power, of honor, of omnipotence.” For twenty four years, he
seeks experience of all kinds. However,finally, his knowledge brings him despite
instead of freedom.
Another minor theme of the play
is the quest for power.faustus power exists more in his imagination then in
fact. When he performsmagic, the audience gets the impression that he is
practical joker or a court entertainer. It is true that he plays pranks of the produces
the spirits of Alexander his paramour, dairies and Helen of troy .it is also
true that he grapes out of season for a pregnant duchess. All the performance
are far removed from his first confident assertion that” a sound magician is demy-god.
Faustus power is an illusory, since in each stage he depends upon
Mephistopheles.
Ø Theme
of mood:-
The predominant mood of
the whole play is somber tragedy, in which the protagonist chooses to be on the
side of the devil and to embrace the evil generated by the devil. Faustus
practice of black magic is “more than heavenly power permits” and brings about
his “hellish fall”. Throughout the play there isa comic interlude that provides
a temporary mood of levity.
Ø Myth
of Christianity:-
According to Jung, the death
of meaning in the mythic symbols of Christianity was beginning during thru
renaissance-reformation period, the age of Dr. Faustus’s. Mankind then began to
lose something which, in one form or another, is necessary for psychic health.
“Mankind has never lacked powerful images to lend magical aid against all the
uncanny things that live in the depths of the psyche, “says Jung, but the
images of Christian myth-logy no longer work for Faustus when he comes to a
crisis in his life. They continue to operate only in a very strange way, in the
nature of the neurotic. But they do not form the basis for anything like a
healthy approach toward life.
Conclusion:-Christianity considers knowledge as sin and doctor
Faustus tries to get knowledge he is hungry for more knowledge which becomes
reason for his death thus, is Christian tragedy.
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