Faust: Batalha Publishers

BEFORE GOETHE, THERE WAS A MAN, A LEGEND, AND A BARGAIN WITH THE DEVIL

For centuries, the name Faust has represented the dangerous pursuit of forbidden knowledge, limitless ambition, and the willingness to exchange one's soul for temporal power.

Yet long before Goethe transformed Faust into one of the commanding figures of world literature, stories of the notorious doctor had already travelled through history, folklore, chapbooks, theatre, and popular performance.

Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, Volume I traces the development of the Faust tradition from the shadowy historical figure behind the legend through its most important pre-Goethean forms.

Was the historical Doctor Faustus a learned magician, a fraudulent astrologer, an itinerant charlatan-or some combination of all three? Drawing together documentary evidence, folklore, literary sources, theology, cultural history, and the history of occult belief, E.A. Bucchianeri examines the life and turbulent age from which the legend emerged.

The study then follows the extraordinary transformation of Faust from controversial historical figure into an enduring literary archetype.

Volume I includes:

- A detailed investigation of the historical Doctor Faustus and his times

- Accounts of his reputation as an occultist, astrologer, and charlatan

- The earliest Faust books and popular Faustian folk traditions

- The development of the demonic pact and damnation narrative

- Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

- A detailed and controversial comparison of Marlowe's A and B texts

- The theological and dramatic transformation of the Faust legend

- The popular tradition of the Faust puppet plays

- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's unfinished Faust drama

- Extensive interdisciplinary discussion of the legend's literary, religious, historical, and cultural contexts

This is not merely a retelling of the familiar story. It is a wide-ranging examination of how scattered reports about a reputed magician became one of Western culture's most persistent myths.

Readers interested in German literature, Renaissance drama, folklore, intellectual history, occult traditions, theology, and the transmission of legends will discover the many texts and cultural forces that prepared the way for Goethe's masterpiece.

Volume I provides the historical and literary foundations; Volume II continues the journey through Goethe's Faust and the extraordinary artistic, philosophical, and cultural legacy that followed.