Faust is alive and well. His emanations appear in literature, art, music, film, and cyberspace. Not only Adam and Eve but also Faust ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So he has excited the human imagination for centuries. But who was this mysterious alchemist or learned academician who dared transgress the borders of accepted knowledge and revel in the world of darkness that the Church condemned and warned against?
We will look for him on the Internet, in Marlowe’s Tragical History of Dr. Johann Faust, and in Gounod’s Faust opera, Liszt’s “Faust” symphony, and Wagner’s Faust overture. The main focus of the seminar is on those Fausts entrenched in German culture. Therefore, a significant part of the seminar is devoted to discussions of Goethe’s Faust. And we will look carefully at the novel Doctor Faust, Mann’s devastating criticism of the rise of Nazi Germany.
