paper no 1 Tragic theology in Doctor Faustus God ,Atheism

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Name:Mehta kavita dineshbhai
Cource:M.A English
Semester :1
Batch:2016-2018
 Roll  no:18
Submitted to:S.M.T S.B.Gardi  M K bhav. uni
                        Department of English
Email id:  kavitamehta164@gmai.com
Paper no:1 The Renaissance Literature
Topic: Tragic theology in Doctor Faustus
            “God” Atheism



My assignment’s
Introduction:
               “Doctor Faustus” the tragic history of whole life and death of Doctor Faustus is written by ‘Christopher Marlow’ is one of the remarkable work of literature. Though many scholars call it a morality play there is sufficient evidence that it is basically atheistic. Faustus  a man who sacrifices his immoral soul in exchange for knowledge and power. Marlow presented a mythic, archetypal tale of human pride,sin,and fall from grace that has appealed to  readers and audiences though the humanist aspirations of the renaissance the spiritual exploration of romanticism,and the skepticism of modernity.

Marlow and God : The tragic theology of Doctor Faustus:

                   ‘Doctor Faustus’ in this story based on fall of doctor Faustus and Christianity. How a common man sells his soul to the devil for more power,knowledge and position in his life. A part from Shakespearean drama few Elizabethan plays have been so frequently and thoughtily studied in recent decades as Marlowe Doctor Faustus.Interpretations based on the biographical evidence of marlowe’s atheism are now in disrepute,because scholarly investigation of elizabethan thought and drametic tradition whould convince us of the orthodoxy of Marlowe artistic theme and attitude.
               The eliment of the supernatural in other elizabethan plays are merely literary drawn from folklore and popular superstition and allied to the fantasy of dreams rather than the speculation of philosophy.That marlowe,who established the machiavellaiam hero-villain on the elizabethan stage,could not fix his attention on the petty arena of politics or on the paltry goal of wealth and political sovereignty.We do not arrive at a more just and scholarly interpretation of Docter Faustus by ignoring contemporary opinions about marlowe and by putting aside the ideas attributed to him by contemporary accusers.
             Hungering for immorality in this play ,he trades his hope of salvation for twenty four year of pleasure and profit,but even the terms of this ridiculous bargain are not honored,because he never attains the power or the knowledge which magic promised .He is never more than master of illusion,pranks,and magic shows and who grows enamoredof his own shadpws and who paradied by the silly clown.His thirst for the absolute ignores the alternative path of caution and acceptance which is always open.
One can be saved like the old man ,not doomed like Faustus ,just as one can be an Ismene,not an Antigone,a Horatio,not a Hamlet.The way of survival of the mean is announced and exemplified by the chorus of marlowe’s play which shaken by the skeptical of tragic suffering,moralizes the error of tragic daring.Thus marlowe’s heroes do not cry out like Hamlet and Lear ,against worlds out of ethical joint.Like figures of Greek mythology they hurl the gauntlets of their will and ambition at whatever goods may be.We could confidently speak of Docter Faustus as a cosmic tragedy if its plot sustained the plilosopical magnitude of the opening scenes.Unfortunately,however the great concluding scene seems to lack the intellectual resonances of the first act.The earlier philosophical questioning of human limitationsseems to have no bering on the ultimate drama of faustus spiritual anguish,which seems wholly personal,and emotional and explicable by christian doctrine.
               As an intellectual rebel,Faustus has Mythical significance,as a writing sinner he seems merely anther example of religious depair.The unparelonable sin of daring but scholars insist that Faustus mistaken they would see him as the victim of is own illusion ,not as the sacrifice to a universal order hostile to human greatness.Perhaps the desire to conventionalize the viewpoint of Docter Faustus is an inevitable reaction against earlier attempts to magnify marlowe’s importance as intellectual rebel and phophet.Marloew’s “Philosophy”was felt ,not argued poetic,not intellectual.Thus where Bacon seeks the scientific knowledge that eradicates mysteries and enable man to control of nature which is immeately miraculous and “Divine”.We look in vain in his play  for an appreciation of the enduring qualities of the human spirit,or for those personal relationship which are treasured in the more genuinely humanistic art of his contemporaries.Marlowe’s “Philosophy” is something that might be called “Contempt for world”.
                  Renaissance humanists inherited the ancient saw that all philosophy is learning how to die.For marlowe ,however the crux of philosophyis why men must die.He knows the traditional justification for the ways of God.  But Faustus remarks “Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man” .And to be but a man is of course to be subject to death.In Docter Faustus ,as in Greek Mythology ,man’s primal disobedience is a prometheance impulse.Knowledge enough man even a sinner like oedipus could become like the Gods.Since divine law is necessarily vicious and absurd.
                   Faustus practice medicine without compassion for human suffering and worse still,he would abandon his studies because his fame is already established and the conquest of death eludes him.Incapable of selfless dedication to his studies,he can use the very chop logic he scorns in philosophy to justify his abandoning of theology and his pursuit of black magic.Because he is glutted with self conceit,his altrustic schemes are self aggranding.He dreams of plesure and profit.Fustus may be more innicent at the beginning of the play than at the close ,he is most arrogant.Most scornful of religion before he falls.His fall is a moral education and discovery,during which he is humanized not degreded.If Faustus were obviously lost and corrupted,there would be no final problem of interpretation ,no need to pore over elizabethan sermons and thological treatises to explain why he is not saved.At the last he is surrounded by man who would pray for him and protect him from the devil,but Faustus will not allow them to risk their lives and soul for him .Faustus claims that his doom was seale d by his blashemous defiance of God.Theology denies his clain on the ground that no trespass has irrevocable consequences and no human act is beyond divine pardon.Yet even theology admits that human acts may have irrevocable consequences.

               Grace is Grace,say the reprevocable consequences of measure for measure,despite all controversy.But Grace in Doctor Faustus,is problematical because marlowe would have it so.He could have shown in the last scene a Faustus who is tormented by the legions and the prospect of hell as the absence of God,but Faustus finds the presence of God unbearable.Because he sees ,not the loving father,but the wrathful Jehovah who cast the rebellious angels down to hell.We can of course ,cite theological reason why Faustus must be damned:he lacks faith,he does not belive in God’s redeeming love,he is guilty of sin of despair.We can not argue the theological reasona why Faustus does not merit God’s pty’when the audience is deeply moved,when the old man pities Faustus,and even mephistophilis was touched to momentary compassion.In Docter Faustus his quarrel with christianity continues.The church is still for him a place superstitious rites and false authorities.He coud not imagine ,nor does he imply in Docter Faustus that this supereme and universal power ever assumed man’s inferior shape,contemptible weakness,and mortality.Marlow play’s the role of an antichrist.Unlike the God who become man,Fautus is man who would be god,whowould escape the human condition which christ willingly assumed,and who deliberately seeks the satanic temptation which christ rejected,like christ but without christ’s love ,Faustus has healed the sick’and he now spurns medicine because he can not by it reemact christ’s miracles he dies with a parapharase of the last words on his lips.

             We can say that Faustus despaired because he misconceived the nature of God .But taking a larger perspective on marlowe desaired because he could not imagine a God other than the deity of tamborlaine and Doctor Faustus .Marlowe’s can not forgive God ,but he forgive the old man who bown his head in submission,even as Tamburlaine can forgive those who bow before his dreadful edicts.But this is the “Charity”of satisfied will,not of compassionate love its obverse is thedamnation of Faustus which echoes imaginatively the slaughter of the Damascan virgins in Tamburlaine.
              At the beginning of Doctor Faustus the subline charity of the sacrifice is poised against Faustus consuming egotism,at the close of the play it is poised against the unpitying wrath of God .Thus while the tragic theology of Docter Faustus admits the Incarnation,which is deriden in marlowe’s “atheistic”pronouncements,the Godlike and the christlike remain antithetical,no tragic fortitude daring to wretched impotance ,who cringing before the devil’s physical tormenting is less heroic than the old man.The mean of life over which superman would soar.If we assume that Doctor Faustus composed in the last year of marlowe’s life is a piese of orthodox moralism.It is the horror of the void of loss and impotence humanity experience which is conveyed by Faustus last soliloquy.Recoling from the intellect that be trayed him.Faustus turns from the pursuit of knowledge to the burning of books and to a longing for self annihilation which is perhaps also exemplified in marlowe’s life.




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