Post by shaxper on May 14, 2002 21:48:53 GMT -5
Some thoughts on Faustus as a learned man:
Compare Faustus and Robin. Faustus is relatively high up in the class hierarchy and is literate. His unnatural craving for learning sends him down the dark path, yet an implicit God-fearing nature continually paralyzes him and almost makes him seek repentance. This struggle distracts Faustus so much that he can't even seem to come up with any good ideas on how to use his demonic powers. His world tour and attack on The Pope are both instigated by mephistophales.
On the other hand, Robin is base and cannot read, yet he has some very concrete ideas on what he would do with such powers if he could have them. So, essentially, is the revolutionary athiestic Marlowe actually reaffirming the status quo, affirming the goodliness of a God at the top of the social order, as well as the idea that higher status people are closer to this God? It would seem that the real tragedy that his juxtopositions of Faust and Robin is intended to unveil is the fact that a hunger for learning disrupts this order; that the upper class is literate because, theoretically, they can handle the responsibility while those below them cannot. But then is Marlowe also attacking the idea of reading and learning, or is he merely having a go at the power-obsessed university professors that he so often escaped from at Cambridge?
Compare Faustus and Robin. Faustus is relatively high up in the class hierarchy and is literate. His unnatural craving for learning sends him down the dark path, yet an implicit God-fearing nature continually paralyzes him and almost makes him seek repentance. This struggle distracts Faustus so much that he can't even seem to come up with any good ideas on how to use his demonic powers. His world tour and attack on The Pope are both instigated by mephistophales.
On the other hand, Robin is base and cannot read, yet he has some very concrete ideas on what he would do with such powers if he could have them. So, essentially, is the revolutionary athiestic Marlowe actually reaffirming the status quo, affirming the goodliness of a God at the top of the social order, as well as the idea that higher status people are closer to this God? It would seem that the real tragedy that his juxtopositions of Faust and Robin is intended to unveil is the fact that a hunger for learning disrupts this order; that the upper class is literate because, theoretically, they can handle the responsibility while those below them cannot. But then is Marlowe also attacking the idea of reading and learning, or is he merely having a go at the power-obsessed university professors that he so often escaped from at Cambridge?
