The Faustus-Figure of Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Mann: A Study in the Birth and Death of Anthropocentric Humanism

Over the past four centuries nearly two hundred writers have felt inspired to use the Faustus-legend to express the striving of their time for the unknowable, the unattainable and the impermissible. This study examines two Faustus-figures, one of the earliest great creations, Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and one of the latest significant versions, Thomas Mann's Adrian Leverkuehn. It concentrates on the use which both writers made of the literary Faustus-tradition in order to illuminate certain aspects of their so widely varying reality, namely, Elizabethan England and Twentieth century Germany. It then discusses the link between the two Faustus- versions. Marlowe gives through his Faustus-figure a warning that the anthropocentric concept of freedom cannot lead to the fulfillment of man's aspirations because it is fraught with danger. Mann demonstrates 350 years later, the truth of Marlowe's fears in the fate of this Faustus-figure, whose reality is sterility, nihilism and atheism. Thus the literary Faustus-tradition, used to portray the climax and collapse, the birth and death of anthropocentric humanism in the twentieth century, completes a full cycle. This work aims at finding the link which connects these two artistic versions of such widely differing realities. It is a comparative study only in the sense that it analyses two different versions of the same literary figure, confronts each with the realistic background against which it was created and draws certain conclusions about the author's implied evaluations and comments. Apart from this, no other element of comparison enters the work