The Faustus story can aid one in an existential search for meaning.
If Mitt Romney sells his soul for the nomination, can he get it back? Christopher Marlowe would say that it doesn’t look good.
A student wrote, “By forcing myself to examine my ideas and Dr. Faustus more carefully and within the lens of my experience, I had several epiphanies that I feel were transformative both to my essay as well as to my understanding of my experience with depression.”
Today I share the story of a student making the case that Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is a case study of a depressive.
“I think Hell is a fable,” Doctor Faustus tells Mephastophilis at one point in Marlowe’s 1593 tragedy. While many Elizabethans would have disagreed—the play terrified them precisely because they believed in a literal hell—we’re more sympathetic with the notion now. To most of us, fire and brimstone and devils with pitchforks are the stuff of […]
How do I sell my soul? Let me count the ways. I wrote in Sunday’s entry how the ego and the soul are pitted against each other in an unending battle. Just think how much better off we’d all be if humans listened to their higher selves and ego took a back seat. […]
Spiritual Sunday A reader’s response to Friday’s post on the Faustus story has me thinking more about Marlowe’s marvelous play. Marlowe informs us that we don’t need to die to go to hell. If we refuse to listen to the voice of our soul, we can find hell right here on earth. If there were […]
Film Friday The baseball playoffs, which concluded with a San Francisco win over the Texas Rangers this past week, have had me thinking about the Faustus story and how many modern renditions of the story get it wrong. If this seems like a leap, let me explain. The Texas Rangers used to be the Washington […]
