I don't know about Classical allusions but there are plenty here with classical delusions if that helps

Isn't that Homer-Phobic

One more point

i know these are words from the english language but i cant work what the feck this all means!

Sometimes I set out for Ludlow
Sometimes I end up in Chepstow

That doesn't sound like too easy a work to get to grips with in an introductory-level University course which covers music, art and philosophy as well as letters. However, there is a whole canon of retellings of the Faust story of which probably the finest and best known is that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832). That play is pretty much contemporaneous (1808 ) with Beethoven's Fifth so comes two centuries after Marlowe's (1604).

I haven't studied Marlowe, but I do know the Goethe, the Berlioz opera La damnation de Faust and a couple of rather s***e modern versions. "Classical allusion" is a feature of a few of these including Part II of the Goethe. (I will try to remind myself of some examples).

Looking at a synopsis a few things stand out that suggest I think three angles to explore:

- To what extent does Marlowe use Greek / Roman darmatic devices? (Example: he uses a Chorus I think. Does Marlowe use only a handful of characters, only a few places (or just one), and only a limited timespan? This kind of economy is - again I think - typical of Greek tragedies and are devices used in more modern plays, including the Goethe, and right up to modern times in for instance Sartre's Huis clos. If so, why?).

- To what extent does Marlowe use Greek / Roman literary or mythological references? (Example: he compares the fate of Dr Faustus to that of Icarus, who flew too near to the sun and fell into the sea because the wax in his wings melted).

- To what extent does Marlowe contrast Greek / Roman ideas with more contemporary ones? (Example: much is made of the relationship between theological ideas on the one hand and scientific ones on the other; Faustus asks Mephistopheles a science question and receives nonsense in reply, and by obtaining power over the material world from Mephistopheles effectively foregoes the need for science in favour of his supernatural powers; is this a parallel with the Greek ideas of science and philosophy on the one hand and their gods and myths on the other? I don't know; perhaps in Greek mythology the gods bend the laws of nature to suit themselves, so you could get a supernatural being to do something for you that normally would not be possible, as Faustus does with Mephistopheles; and the Greek gods constantly pi** about in the individual lives of humans and manipulate them for their own ends, which is what Mephistopheles is doing here. But I am not an expert on Classical mythology and theology so don't sue me if this is nonsense).

This

[Link]

gives a summary of what the term "classical allusion" in the Faust tale means, in the context of the Goethe, no doubt it could read across to the Marlowe and others too.

Warning: I did mostly German literarure and got a Bishop Desmond.

Edited by chateauferret (14 Feb 2018 7.10pm)

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Actually just to follow that up I was persuaded to part with £5.49 to buy the E-book I referenced and it provides a good broad survey of literature, although doesn't provide much depth. Could be useful for a broad course like this though.

The mention of the Marlowe is brief but there is a more in-depth treatment of the Goethe which admittedly includes discussion of the play's German (Weimar) context.

Edited by chateauferret (14 Feb 2018 7.46pm)

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There's a lot of that about.

Ibsen's Peer Gynt is Voltaire's Candide.
Priestley's An Inspector Calls is Gogol's Revisor.
Various authors retell the story of Don Juan.
White's The Once and Future King is Mallory's La Morte d'Arthur.

Which is not to say that an author is just paraphrasing or plagiarising a source. Goethe for instance embeds the tale into the Weimar romanticism and into the contemporary world view and weaves in some suitable moral plot around Gretchen and the murder and Faust's pleading with God; in the earlier versions the morality is much more cut and dried, you treat with the Devil, you go to Hell. The Priestley / Gogol example (and I don't know that it's a conscious copy) is an exactly similar plot, down to the detail of everyone being thunderstruck when the arrival of a "real" inspector is announced, but exposes the attitudes of the English middle-class rather than satirising those of small-town Russia.

It's not the same as allusion though, where the author is taking various ideas, themes, motifs, characters, literary techniques and plot elements and weaving them into his work together with a bunch of stuff of his own (or retold from earlier works). In the context of the exam. question, for instance, it would be important to separate the elements that allude to Classical elements from the elements that derive from plot retelling; the Faust story goes back to German stories ostensibly based on a real person, Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480 - 1540) but more probably derived from a number of different persons and legends and composited by Marlowe or others; as may be the case with Merlin, likewise a composite character integrated by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the thirteenth century. See
[Link]

Edited by chateauferret (14 Feb 2018 10.27pm)

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