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Scholarly Addiction: Doctor Faustus and the Drama of Devotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rebecca Lemon
Rebecca Lemon*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Abstract

When The English Faust Book describes Faustus as addicted to study and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus depicts necromantic books as “ravishing,” these texts draw on classical and Renaissance notions of laudable addiction. Following its Latin origin in contract law, addiction appears in sixteenth-century writings as service, dedication, and devotion. Tracing invocations of addiction from Cicero to Perkins, this essay explores the influence of Calvin and Calvinist-minded Cambridge divines through Doctor Faustus’s preoccupation with the challenge of addicted commitment. If Calvinists praise committed devotion, Marlowe challenges such views by staging the terror as well as the wonder of addictive release.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , Fall 2016 , pp. 865 - 898
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Renaissance Society of America

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