Name : Vishva Gajjar
Roll No. : 45
Stream : M.A.
Main Subject : English
Semester : 1
Paper no. 1 – Renaissance Literature
Assignment topic : Seven Deadly Sins in
Doctor
Faustus
Mentor : Dr. Dilip P. Barad Sir
Department of English
Bhavnagar University
Batch : 2018-2020
Introduction of Writer:
Christopher Marlowe also known as Kit Marlowe was born on26
February 1564 and died on 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 year 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 overreaching protagonists.
Some of his works are as under:
·
Tamburlane
·
The
Jew of Malta
·
Doctor
Faustus
·
Edward
2
·
The
Massacre at Paris
Overview of Play:
Faustus is the protagonist and tragic hero of Marlowe’s play. He
is a contradictory character, capable of tremendous eloquence and possessing
awesome ambition, almost wilful blindness and a willingness to waste powers
that he has gained at great cost. When we first see Faustus, he is just
preparing to embark on his career as a magician. Before practicing magic, he
imagines piling up wealth from the four corners of the globe, reshaping the map
of Europe (both politically and physically), and gaining access to every scrap
of knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing man, but
his ambitions are so grand that we cannot help being impressed, and we even
feel sympathetic toward him. He represents the spirit of the Renaissance, with
its rejection of the medieval, God-centred universe, and its embrace of human possibility.
But Faustus also possesses an
obtuseness that becomes apparent during his bargaining sessions with
Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact with the devil is the only way to
fulfil his ambitions, Faustus then blinds himself happily to what such a pact
actually means. Sometimes he tells himself that hell is not so bad and that one
needs only “fortitude”; at other times, even while conversing with
Mephastophilis, he remarks to the disbelieving demon that he does not actually
believe hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern about the prospect
of eternal damnation, -Faustus is also beset with doubts from the beginning,
setting a pattern for the play in which he repeatedly approaches repentance
only to pull back at the last moment. Why he fails to repent is unclear:
-sometimes it seems a matter of pride and continuing ambition, sometimes a
conviction that God will not hear his plea. Other times, it seems that
Mephastophilis simply bullies him away from repenting.
Bullying Faustus is less difficult
than it might seem, because Marlowe, after setting his protagonist up as a
grandly tragic figure of sweeping visions and immense ambitions, spends the
middle scenes revealing Faustus’s true, petty nature. Once Faustus gains his
long-desired powers, he does not know what to do with them. Marlowe suggests
that this uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that desire for knowledge
leads inexorably toward God, whom Faustus has renounced. But, more generally,
absolute power corrupts Faustus: once he can do everything, he no longer wants
to do anything. Instead, he traipses around Europe, playing tricks on yokels
and performing conjuring acts to impress various heads of state. He uses his
incredible gifts for what is essentially trifling entertainment. The fields of
possibility narrow gradually, as he visits ever more minor nobles and performs
ever more unimportant magic tricks, until the Faustus of the first few scenes
is entirely swallowed up in mediocrity. Only in the final scene is Faustus
rescued from mediocrity, as the knowledge of his impending doom restores his
earlier gift of powerful rhetoric, and he regains his sweeping sense of vision.
Now, however, the vision that he sees is of hell looming up to swallow him.
Marlowe uses much of his finest poetry to describe Faustus’s final hours,
during which Faustus’s desire for repentance finally wins out, although too
late. Still, Faustus is restored to his earlier grandeur in his closing speech,
with its hurried rush from idea to idea and its despairing,
Renaissance-renouncing last line, “I’ll burn my books!” He becomes once again a
tragic hero, a great man undone because his ambitions have butted up against
the law of God.
Seven Deadly Sins:
He does nothing to protect Germany or the poor. Instead he commits
many mortal and venal sins:
1.
Pride : (the mother of all sins: believing
too much in our own abilities interferes with us recognising the grace of
God).Faustus casts aside the doctrines available to him, scorning them for
being too easy or simplistic for him. He therefore is unsatisfied with being
mortal, i.e., subject to the laws of nature and God. He believes God will not
give him the answers he deserves while he is on earth, so turns to Lucifer
instead.
2.
Covetousness : (the desire for
material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual). Faustus requests
that Mephistopheles brings him ‘money, possessions and sensual delights’ every
day, temporal satisfactions that are nothing in comparison to what is promised
by God in Heaven.
3.
Envy : (the desire for others’ traits,
status, abilities, or situation) Faustus envies the Emperor, the Pope, Lucifer
and even God for having power and status beyond him. He summons Mephistopheles
so that he can use him to have a power he hopes will exceed the power of them
all.
4.
Anger : (when love is overcome by fury) Faustus is so furious at
Benvolio’s mockery of him that he indulges in a petty act of spite by conjuring
a pair of antlers to appear on the man’s head. When he cannot face the truth
the Old Man offers him – that forgiveness is his if he asks God for it – he
becomes angry and asks Mephistopheles to call demons to torture the Old Man to
his death.
5.
Gluttony : (an excessive desire to consume more
than that which one requires) At the end of his twenty-fourth year, with death
close, Faustus is ‘swilling and revelling with his students’ in a feast with
‘food and wine enough for an army’.
6.
Lust : (an excessive craving for the
pleasures of the body) The Old Man pleads with Faustus with love to repent and
call on God’s mercy. Faustus, prizing flesh over spirit, wastes his remaining
time on lechery rather than heed his advice. He instructs Mephistopheles
instead to summon Helen of Troy for his lover. She is simply a likeness
conjured by the demon but Faustus tells her ‘rivals for your love can burn down
Wittenberg in their longing to have you home’. Where is his promise to protect
Germany now?
7.
Sloth : (the avoidance of physical or
spiritual work) The slothful person, like Faustus, is unwilling to do what God
wants because of the effort it takes to do it. He summons Mephistopheles and
signs the contract with Lucifer so he can have knowledge, possessions and
experiences on-tap without any effort on his part.
He performs pranks, not blessings. He
uses his incredible gifts for what is essentially trifling entertainment e.g.
antlers, cherries, summoning visions of past heroes and heroines. ‘This genius
who can conjure wonders on request’ becomes a conjuror not a do-gooder who
performs ‘pranks and jokes, making monkeys of his enemies.’ He ridicules the
Pope and the clergy with jests and wicked tricks.
He succumbs to despair and
presumption. By despair, Faustus ceases to hope for his personal salvation from
God, for help in attaining it or for the forgiveness of his sins. Despair is a
sin because causes a person to lose faith in the promise of God’s goodness,
justice and mercy.
Faustus presumes upon his own
capacities, (hoping to be able to save himself without help from on high), and
presumes upon God’s almighty power and mercy (hoping to obtain his forgiveness
without conversion and glory without merit) – ‘What can God do to me anyway,
with Mephistopheles at my shoulder? I’m safe.’
The Seven Deadly Sins that
Mephistopheles's devil friends conjure to amuse Faustus are an allegory in the
purest sense of the term.
An allegory is an abstract concept
that appears in a material, concrete form. And in this case, the seven deadly
sins (which separate a person from God forever if they're not repented) appear
as actual people.
In front of Faustus, Pride, Covetousness
(Greed), Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, Sloth, and Lechery (Lust) march in the weirdest
parade that ever paraded. They describe their parentage—that is, where and whom
they came from—and defining characteristics.
Medieval drama had a long tradition
of representing the Seven Deadly Sins as people, so when Doctor Faustus was
first performed, the Sins would probably have come onstage in immediately
recognizable costumes. The audience would have known exactly what was going on And
even we modern folks are in on the joke. The things the Sins tell Faustus about
themselves are exactly what we'd expect: Gluttony, the sin of overindulgence in
food and drink, complains that his parents left him "only" enough
money for thirty meals and ten snacks a day, while Sloth, the sin of laziness,
doesn't even have enough energy to describe himself (okay, that's pretty funny,
Marlowe).
In the medieval tradition of
allegory, a character's relationship with the Sins tells us which side he's
on—God's, or the devil's. Three guesses where Faustus falls. He just laughs
about them, which tells us not only that he's on the side of the devil, but
also that he's there because he doesn't take sin as seriously as he should. Not
cool, dude.
Conclusion:
This way we can know about the play and
the character of Doctor Faustus.
Evaluation Link for above Topic
http://dilipbarad.blogspot.
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