Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Faust Scholarship and the Project at Hand
- 1 The German Faustian Century
- 2 Faustus of the Sixteenth Century: His Life, Legend, and Myth
- 3 Cornelius Agrippa's Double Presence in the Faustian Century
- 4 Converging Magical Legends: Faustus, Paracelsus, and Trithemius
- 5 Faust from Cipher to Sign and Pious to Profane
- 6 The Aesthetics of the 1587 Spies Historia von D. Johann Fausten
- 7 The Lutheran Faust: Repentance in the Augsburg Confession and the German Faustbuch
- 8 Marriage in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587)
- 9 Antiauthoritarianism and the Problem of Knowledge in the Faustbuch
- 10 Exploring the “Three-Fold World”: Faust as Alchemist, Astrologer, and Magician
- 11 The Devil in the Early Modern World and in Sixteenth-Century German Devil Literature
- 12 Encounters with “Schwarz-Hans”: Jacob Böhme and the Literature of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century
- 13 D. Johann Faust and the Cannibals: Geographic Horizons in the Sixteenth Century
- A Sixteenth-Century Chronology of Significant References to Faust with Parallel World Events
- Select Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
9 - Antiauthoritarianism and the Problem of Knowledge in the Faustbuch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Faust Scholarship and the Project at Hand
- 1 The German Faustian Century
- 2 Faustus of the Sixteenth Century: His Life, Legend, and Myth
- 3 Cornelius Agrippa's Double Presence in the Faustian Century
- 4 Converging Magical Legends: Faustus, Paracelsus, and Trithemius
- 5 Faust from Cipher to Sign and Pious to Profane
- 6 The Aesthetics of the 1587 Spies Historia von D. Johann Fausten
- 7 The Lutheran Faust: Repentance in the Augsburg Confession and the German Faustbuch
- 8 Marriage in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587)
- 9 Antiauthoritarianism and the Problem of Knowledge in the Faustbuch
- 10 Exploring the “Three-Fold World”: Faust as Alchemist, Astrologer, and Magician
- 11 The Devil in the Early Modern World and in Sixteenth-Century German Devil Literature
- 12 Encounters with “Schwarz-Hans”: Jacob Böhme and the Literature of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century
- 13 D. Johann Faust and the Cannibals: Geographic Horizons in the Sixteenth Century
- A Sixteenth-Century Chronology of Significant References to Faust with Parallel World Events
- Select Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
When we look back in history, our perception of differences is fore-shortened in time the way our perception of the horizon reduces distinctions in space. A millennium of the ancient world boils down to antiquity. The centuries from 800 to 1500 can be amalgamated into medievalism. Early modern periods are spoken of as homogeneous ages. Not only are ages and centuries homogenized, movements such as the Reformation or the Renaissance acquire a monolithic aspect. The equalizing resolution of phenomena distances them from one another by eliminating nuances and ambiguities. An example of such leveling is our perception of the 1587 Faustbuch as an embodiment of the theological conservatism of the Reformation, which rejected the humanism of the Renaissance. It makes far better sense to recognize the German work of 1587 as the expression of an anticlerical impulse within the ranks of the Reformation, a voice within a forgotten debate over authority and knowledge.
More than half a century separates the early notoriety of the magician Dr. Faustus from his seminal reappearance in printed literature. In focusing on the moral of the Faust story, we overlook aspects that do not fit our understanding of nature and religion in the age of the Renaissance or Reformation. One striking detail distinguishes the work of 1587 from the accounts of a half century earlier. Dr. Faustus, we learn in chapter 1, has become a “Doctor Theologiae.” After beginning life as the son of a good and pious peasant family, he had been entrusted as a child to his cousin, a burgher of Wittenberg.
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- The Faustian CenturyGerman Literature and Culture in the Age of Luther and Faustus, pp. 215 - 240Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013