Themes And Styles In Christopher Marlowe’S Dr. Faustus
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Themes And Styles In Christopher Marlowe’S Dr. Faustus
Chapter one
1.0 Introduction.
This non-African drama, Dr. Faustus, is a mediaeval play. It used allegorical characters to portray man’s life, temptation, sin, and the struggle for salvation and death. Dr. Faustus confronts the powers of good and evil in the guise of personified abstractions such as the Good and Bad Angels, the seven deadly sins, and the Devil.
The play’s didactic objective is to teach the audience Christian virtues and warn them against vices. Also in the play, one is transported beyond the boundaries of the mental world into the realm of space and the supernatural.
1.1 Objectives of the Study
This study aims to explain the ideas and styles used in Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr. Faustus. There is a detailed analysis of textual styles in connection to themes.
1.2 Scope of Study
This essay discusses the ideas and forms in Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr Faustus. Marlowe uses these components to bring the work’s subject matter to life. My choice of Marlowe as a literary artist is influenced by his expertise in depicting the essence of man in the light of getting everything but losing his soul.
The themes and styles appeal to my literary judgement of renaissance and mediaeval values, the divided nature of man, and power as a corruptive influence, all of which are central to this essay.
1.3 Methodology.
This is quantitative research. The text Dr Faustus serves as the primary source of information for this extensive study. Others include M.H. Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, Anthology: An Introduction to Literature, Mc Cullen, J.T., “Dr. Faustus and Renaissance Learning,” Collier’s Encyclopaedia, and Martins Amechi’s Comprehensive Literature.
1.4 Theoretical Background
Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus is based on a moralistic viewpoint. This method focusses on principles, lessons, and messages that can help readers improve their lives and better understand the world. This play reinterprets the Christian dictum, “What shall it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?”
Doctor Faustus sells his soul to the devil and is condemned to hell. Marlowe discusses Dr. Faustus’ theological beliefs: In Acts 1, Faustus has the opportunity to query Mephistopheles about damnation. He could be considered an atheist because he denies the existence of God and views religion as a false ritual.
He says, “My heart is hardened, and I cannot repent. I can scarcely name salvation, faith, or paradise, swords, poisons, halters, and an envenomed steel.
I have land before me to dispatch myself… “I am resolved; Faustus will not repent” (45).
When he ultimately asks for forgiveness and repents to God, he is denied and sentenced to eternity in hell.
Moralistic play’s premise is excellent conduct, and it resonates with a wide range of themes that educate readers ethical values and lessons.
1.5 Life and Works of the Author
Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564 to John Marlowe, a shoemaker. He had two sisters, Dorothy and Ann. He attended King’s School in Canterbury before moving on to Benet College of Corpus Christi in Cambridge.
He received his bachelor’s degree in 1583. In 1587, he began a master’s degree program, which was not completed because the university threatened to withhold his final degree. He later completed the program and proceeded to London.
His debut play, Tamburlaine, was performed in 1587 or 1588. The story is based on Pedro Mexia’s Spanish biography of Timur. This propelled him to immediate prominence. Doctor Faustus, a significant improvement on Tamburlaine’s work, came out in 1604.
Others include The Jew of Malta, Edward 11, the Paris Massacre, and the Tragedy of Dido. In addition, he wrote small poems such as “Come live with me and be my love,” which was translated from Oxid’s Amores and Lucani’s Pharsalia, as well as a brilliant paraphrase of Musaeus’ Hero and Leanoler, which Chapman finished.
Marlowe was thought to be an atheist with the hazardous connotation of being an enemy of God. He has frequently been referred to as a spy, brawler, heretic, “magician,” “tobacco user,” and “counterfeiter.”
J.A. Donnie and Constance Koriyama have argued against these hypotheses, although J.B. Steane stated that “it appears absurd to dismiss all of these Elizabethan rumours and accusations as the Marlowe myth.” It is worth noting that Marlowe was murdered in prison while he was only twenty-nine.
1.6 Review of Criticism
The available literature demonstrates that work has been done on Dr Faustus, topics, and styles. However, my investigation exposes the following facts regarding the passage.
According to Arian Sachs, who interprets the play as an exploration of protestant theology with an orthodox moral, the scheme of values in which Doctor Faustus’ action occurs is the fundamental Christian outlook that prevailed in the Western world from the decline of Roman secularism to the disintegration of the dogmatic tradition long after the play was written.
For Sachs, any interpretation of the play that views Faustus as a figure to be revered by the audience ignores the religious-historical context in which the play was written.
Similarly, Robert Ornstein denies Faustus’s status as an ideal humanist.
According to Joseph T. McMullen, Faustus’ downfall is the direct outcome of his “culpable ignorance”. As Mike Pincombe points out, “for all Faustus’ learning, he is still a dilettante when it comes to wisdom.”
This argument is not without evidence; Faustus willingly gives away his soul, despite Mephistopheles’ words of experience warning him to “leave these frivolous demands, which strike a terror to my fainting soul!” (Acts3.83-84).
He takes his intellectual scepticism to ludicrous levels, questioning Mephistopheles’ account of hell. With the remark “Come, I think hell’s a fable,” he provides himself with visible proof of its absence. (Acts1.1.130).
Despite his academic reputation, one can dispute Faustus’ talents as a scholar; the syllogism that he constructs in the first soliloquy serves as an example.
Faustus, in Jerome’s Bible, views it favourably. (He reads) “Stipendium peccatimors est.”
Ha!
Stipendium, etc.
Sin brings death as its reward. That is hard.
(He reads) Sipecass Negamus, Fallimum
And nulla est in mobis veritas if we assert that no sin We make decisions for ourselves, and there is no truth in ourselves.
Why be like we must sin and thus consequence (Acts1.1.38-48)
Faustus’ assertion is logically sound, but the biblical quotations on which it is based are completely out of context, as David Belington observes: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God’s is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23); the second, “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8).
In his Poetics, Aristotle proposed the elements of tragedy. He says that:
Tragedy is a copy of an admirable, complete, and monumental action in a pleasurable language, with each species separated into several sections; performed by actors rather than narration; and purifying such feelings through pity and dread.
Philip Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry, written nearly two thousand years after Marlowe’s time, contains echoes of Aristotle’s definition of the form. He uses tragedy for a more didactic and utilitarian aim than Aristotle.
According to J.C. Maxwell, “Faustus is everyman, and his sin is a re-enactment of Adam’s sin—pride.”
Marlowe Dr. Faustus, a tragedy set in the 18th Century Elizabethan Era, exemplifies Aristotle’s description of tragedy. According to his definition, tragedy or terrible occurrences may only happen to a man of high renown who has risen to such heights or achieved such success that he has mastered all of his surveys.
Such a man must have a fundamental weakness in his nature or character that will cause him to tumble from that height, and in most situations, that flaw must be of the hubris variety. Pride against the gods.
According to Laura Reis Mayer, Dr Faustus is a morality drama, a historical allegory, and the story of a hero who goes evil as a result of the quandary given by an ever-changing world. (3)
Sophocles, the Greek dramatist, explored the core ideas in Dr Faustus in Oedipus, in which the protagonist’s fallibility was attributed to his harsh and impulsive temper. Shakespeare uses this basic premise in the tragedies Julius Creaser, King Lear, and Macbeth.
Arthur Miler, a 20th-century American playwright, contrasted Aristotle’s notion of tragedy in his classic play Death of a Salesman by describing the tragedy of the average man as opposed to tragedy involving a man of noble origin.
1.7 Justification.
Looking at the aforementioned assessments, it is clear that work has been done on Dr Faustus. My research differs from all of these since it focusses on themes and styles.
I chose this topic because it has ethical concepts that are realistic and applicable to modern societies. The circumstance in the book portrays life and human experiences in current society, which is the theme of this essay.
1.8 Thesis Statement. This essay covers a wide range of topics, including the tension between mediaeval values and the Renaissance, power as a corruptive force, man’s divided nature, and the text’s styles.
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