The literature of the Western world has been dominated by a few pervasive myths that have obsessed human consciousness for hundreds of years. A number of these immediately rush to mind: the Cinderella fantasy (perhaps the formative myth of our Western civilization); the biblical story of David and Goliath; the folk tale of Jack the Giant Killer or St. George and the dragon; the narrative of King Arthur, the Round Table, and the Holy Grail. My study focuses on another of the seminal legends that define Western culture: the magical Faust story. This hardy legend found its roots in the marshy soil of medieval folklore, budded in the Renaissance, blossomed in nineteenth-century drama and opera, and flowered in twentieth- and twenty-first-century drama, opera, novel, and cinema.