LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 14:7 July 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Dr. Faustus – A Sermon against Atheism

Shabnum Iftikhar, M.A. Political Science, M.A. English Literature, ELT

Abstract

The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, commonly referred to as Dr. Faustus is a play based upon the vicissitudes of life of a scholar from Wittenberg, Germany who sells his soul to the devil for power, knowledge, and sensual pleasures. Dr. Faustus is a rebellious character who shuns all the established conventions of his time and chooses to live a life of absolute voluptuousness and blasphemy. We can perceive Marlowe’s gifted writing talent, which he has used in creating a gigantic character of Dr. Faustus. Bold and audacious, rebellious and adventurer at a time, Dr. Faustus is incomparable in the whole bulk of English Literature in his appearance, gesture, and genius. He makes a 24 years agreement with the devil to enjoy limitless power and infinite liberty to fulfill his satanic wishes without a prick of consciousness. Marlowe has presented him as a person who is afire with burning passions to achieve all unachievable. Absolutely unaware of the realities that he is inviting to catastrophe and absolute catastrophe to him and nothing else, he indulges himself in a life of sensual pleasures.

This paper deals with the purpose for which the play might have been written. An analysis of the character of Dr. Faustus and the consequences of his actions are discussed.

The Renaissance Age

In Dr. Faustus, Marlowe has projected a true spirit of the Renaissance era and it is also unignorable that Marlowe himself was a complete package of that time – Renaissance. According to the dictionary definition, the word Renaissance means in general any rebirth or reawakening. “The term is specifically applied to the widespread cultural revival, which marks the division between the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ and the modern world. In fact, it began in the fourteenth century in Italy and this new wave gradually started spreading over Western Europe and England in the following two centuries … The main ingredients of this new spirit were individualism and worldliness; and these two traits found manifestation in many forms such as its great yearning for knowledge and learning without fetters, its love of beauty and hankering after sensual pleasures of life, its brave spirit of adventure and its sky-high ambition and supreme lust for power and pelf in this world” (Famous Publications, 2008)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Shabnum Iftikhar, M.A. Political Science, M.A. English Literature, ELT
University of the Punjab
Lahore
Pakistan

Ph.D. Candidate, Argosy University
Atlanta Campus, Georgia 30328
USA
shabnum53@hotmail.com
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