• Research Paper on:
    Analyzing the Tragedy Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

    Number of Pages: 5

     

    Summary of the research paper:

    The aspects that qualify this work as a literary tragedy are the focus of this five page analysis. Two sources are cited in the bibliography.

    Name of Research Paper File: TG15_TGfaust.rtf

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    Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
    paper properly! What constitutes a literary tragedy? According to noted Shakespearean scholar Andrew Cecil Bradley, a tragedy is "concerned primarily with one person" (25), or hero. Furthermore,  the story is a succession of events which culminates in "the death of the hero" (Bradley 25). These events, generated by the heros actions (referred to as "tragic flaws,"  usually take the form of some type of catastrophic suffering, which lead to a "total reversal of fortune" (Bradley 26). What could be more catastrophic than Christopher Marlowes late  sixteenth-century play, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. In it, there is a singular protagonist, Dr. John Faustus. Faustus has dedicated his life  to the acquisition of superior intellect, as a Wittenburg University professor. He believes only in knowledge and reason, and it is his dream to pursue all types of knowledge,  even that which has been labeled as forbidden and regarded as "evil" by a God-fearing society. It is important for the student who is writing about this topic to understand  that in order to be considered a tragedy, the events which result in calamity must be initiated by the hero. In the case of Doctor Faustus, it is the  professor who charts his own fateful course. He dreams of securing the knowledge which would make eternal mortal life possible, and curses the faith in a Christian bible, favoring  instead the power of metaphysics and black magic. Faustus exclaims, "The reward of sin is death? Thats hard... If we say that we have no sin, / we  deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. Why, then, belike / we must sin, and so consequently die, / Ay, we must die an everlasting death. 

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