This presentation is a part of my academic presentation of The Renaissance literature Semester 1 of Department English MA English, MKBU and it is submitted to Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir.

2. “Themes are the fundamental and often universal
ideas explored in a literary work “

3. Various themes in Doctor
Faustus
 Pride of Dr. Faustus - hubris
 Quest for knowledge
 Quest for power
 Over Ambitious nature of Dr.Fuastus
 Sin, redemption & damnation
 Divided nature of man
 Good versus Evil
 Conflict between renaissance and
medieval

4. Pride of Dr. Faustus :
Hubris
 The major theme of Doctor Faustus
 Faustus is swollen by pride
 The Pride which goes before a fall.
 His sins become his pride , Faustus’ sin is not his
practice of necromancy, but his denial of God’s power
and majesty.
 His pride is the source of his damnation. All the other
sins committed by him are various aspects of the sin of
pride
 The Pride of a man who refuses to accept limitations of
human knowledge
 He has to pay fore his arrogance and pride
 Faustus hubris was because he loved the materialistic
life.

5. Quest for knowledge
 Central theme
 He examines all the orthodox branches of
knowledge and finds them wanting.
 Quest for knowledge; inadequate, unsatisfying
and incomplete
 He chooses magic, for it promises “a world of
profit and delight, /Of power, of honor, of
omnipotence.”
 For twenty- four years, he seeks experience of all
kinds. However, finally, his knowledge brings him
despair instead of freedom. Why?
 Concept of means and ends
 His path is his error of Judgment

6. Quest for Power
 A desire to be ‘Omnipotent’ or ‘demigod’.
 Misuses the power
 All these his performances are far
removed from his first confident assertion
that “a sound magician is a demi-god.”
 Faustus’ power is illusory, since at each
stage he depends upon Mephistophilis.

7. Sin, redemption and
Damnation
 Christian ideology
 First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines
as acts contrary to the will of God. Faustus commits
what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he
disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly
renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear
allegiance to the devil.
 Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell
rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework,
this turning away from God condemns him to spend an
eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus
desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to
Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent.
 Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redemen
 Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different
universe, where redemption is no longer possible and
where certain sins can not be forgive

8. The Conflict between Medieval and
Renaissance Values
 R.M. Dawkins :Doctor Faustus’ tells “the story of a
Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval
price for being one.” `the heart of one of the play’s
central themes
 The clash between the medieval world and the
world of the emerging Renaissance.
 “Dr. Faustus” put human at the center
 The medieval world placed God at the center of
existence and shunted aside man and the natural
world.
 The Renaissance is Rise of Humanism where men
at the center
 In the medieval academy, theology was the queen
of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though,
secular matters took center stage.

9. Power as a Corrupting Influence
 Universal theme
 Once Faustus actually gains the practically
limitless power that he so desires, however, his
horizons seem to narrow.
 His ambition is somehow sapped.
 It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by
making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior
after he sells his soul hardly rises to the
level of true wickedness.
 Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts
Faustus by making him mediocre and by
transforming his boundless ambition into a
meaningless delight in petty celebrity.
 Faustus is curse to hi mean. He has gained the
whole world, but he does not know what to do
with it.

10. The Divided Nature of Man
 To say something about man nature is difficult
 PuzzNature of Faustus
 Faustus is constantly undecided about
whether he should repent and return to
God or continue to follow his pact with
Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on
throughout the play, as part of him of
wants to do good and serve God, but part
of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts
after the power that Mephastophilis
promises.
 Appearance of Good and bad Angel

11. Good versus Evil
 Universal theme
 Good angel versus bad Angel
 Ultimately devil is win