Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, the first in a sequence on modern western world literature, concerns Faust, Part I by Goethe. I explain Goethe’s place in world literature among the most major writers, his rich historical context in the moment of German Romanticism and Weimar Classicism, and his extraordinarily various achievements in almost every field of literature as well as in science and thought. Then I recount the history of the Faust legend and explain Goethe’s innovations on the myth. Finally, we consider the many themes and modes of the first part of the dramatic poem: the mission of the poet, the value of negation, the meaning of magic, the truth of nature, everything from neo-Shakespearean tragedy to bourgeois romance to proto-surrealist phantasmagoria, not to mention the mystery of salvation. Next week: Faust, Part II. Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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