Doctor Faustus with The English Faust Book (Hackett Classics) - Softcover

Christopher Marlowe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872207293 ISBN 13: 9780872207295

Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc, 2005

This edition of Doctor Faustus features annotated versions, with modernized spelling and punctuation, of the 1604 A-text and the 1592 text of Marlowe's source, the English Faust Book --a translation of the best-selling Historia von Johann Fausten published in Frankfurt in 1587, which recounts the strange story of Doctor John Faustus and his pact with the spirit Mephistopheles. David Wootton's Introduction charts Marlowe's brief, meteoric career; the delicate social and political climate in which Doctor Faustus was staged and the vexed question of the religious sensibilities to which it may have catered; the interpretive significance of variations between the A and B texts; and the shrewd and subversive uses to which Marlowe put the English Faust Book in crafting, according to Wootton, a drama in which orthodox Christian teaching triumphed, but in which Faustus has all the best lines.

Review:

This is an excellent edition; I really appreciate the clear Introduction and the exceptionally useful notes. I look forward to using this text with a freshman literature class who will really benefit from the helpful textual apparatus. --Charlotte England, Department of English, Salisbury University The inexpensive paperback will allow this student-friendly text to be added to the reading list of a variety of high-school and college courses. Teachers as well as students will find the Introduction here very useful. -- Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

Synopsis:

This edition of the 'A' text, with supporting documents that include selections from The English Life of Faustus, contemporary testimonies to Marlowe's 'atheism', and passages from the 'B' text, offers a startling new context in which to understand this play, its comedy, and its tawdry representation of demonic magic. In this light, argues Wootton, Marlowe's Faustus both reflects the centrality of comedy to the Faust legend and plays an ambiguous role in a crucial intellectual debate of the playwright's time.

• Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0872207293
• ISBN 13: 9780872207295
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: David Wootton