The Pursuit of Knowledge of Christopher Marlowe and Mary Shellys Literature - Coursework Example

The Pursuit of Knowledge The pursuit of knowledge is a common theme throughout much of literature regardless of the time in which it is produced or the country from which it originates. However, the direction by which this knowledge is sought as well as the results of it are frequently portrayed in vastly different ways, again largely dependent upon the time in which it is produced. As might be expected, a great deal of the symbolism used and the nature of the individuals involved are built upon the society into which the story is released. This is not only the result of the knowledge of the author, but also the prominent ideologies and values of the contemporary period. While this might not be immediately important among two works created a mere ten years apart, works created in the Renaissance will demonstrate a much different approach to life than works created at the height of the Industrial Revolution. While both periods represent times of tremendous change, the way in which they affected the populace were quite different. For this reason, the stories told in these time periods are full of vastly different symbols, modes of action and ultimate results. Nevertheless, works such as Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, written in 1616 at the height of the Renaissance, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written in 1818 during the Industrial Revolution, manage to convey similar stories at their most basic levels. To understand how this was possible, it is necessary to first compare the historical context of these two periods and the genres into which each of these stories were created before critical analysis of the stories can occur and comparisons made regarding their fundamental teaching. Marlowe’s work was written during a period in history now referred to as the Renaissance. It was a time characterized by a great deal of change as people transitioned out from the dark Middle Ages into the enlightened world of art and science. However, literature and other forms of artistic endeavors remained very closely linked with the ideals and beliefs found in the rest of the social and cultural world, which was both questioning and attempting to validate the claims of the church regarding the possible and impossible. Concepts such as the sorcery contained within Marlowe’s play were considered very real fears and were often associated with the work of the devil. “It is significant that Marlowe’s great play was written at a time in which the possibility of sorcery was not merely a theatrical fantasy but a widely shared fear, a fear upon which the state could act … with horrendous ferocity” (“The Sixteenth Century”, 2007). The culture in which Marlowe wrote was rocked not only by changing ideas regarding what was possible in terms of making deals with the devil, but also with changing religious beliefs as the Reformation brought out hostile debates regarding many of the fundamental questions of life, specifically the exact formula necessary to achieve the salvation of the soul. The circulation of a Protestant Bible brought the word of God to the common man, but made it necessary as well to discuss just how the various tenets found within the great book were interpreted and applied to daily living as the importance of the Roman Catholic Church and its various functionaries were questioned. “Those doctrines and structures, above all the interpretation of the central ritual of the eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, were contested with murderous ferocity, as the fates of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew and the Catholic martyr Robert Aske make painfully clear (“The Sixteenth Century”, 2007). In this environment, it is not surprising to find a text that directly questions whether the pursuit of knowledge such as that pursued by Dr. Faustus, was truly in the best interest of the individual or of society as a whole, nor that this pursuit is held in conjunction with a magical deal with the devil in order to perform. The Industrial Revolution was the cause of another great time of change, also referred to in literary circles as the Victorian period. Like the Renaissance, the comfortable old social and cultural norms were being challenged in ways they had never before experienced as new technology in the form of machines and new social structures in the form of growing cities emerged as driving forces in many people’s everyday lives. “By the beginning of the Victorian period, the Industrial Revolution, as this shift was called, had created profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where they lived in new urban slums” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). The rising middle class began breaking down the old class structure that had formed the backbone of European society for so much of its history just as advances in technology and machinery touched off new debate regarding the existence of the soul and the nature of God. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution touched off new debate as well regarding the veracity of the Bible itself. With the availability of new jobs in the cities, traditional women’s roles were also being challenged as more and more young women sought better futures for themselves within the factory setting. Like the Renaissance, the public was becoming more and more involved in the debates being waged, particularly as newspapers and other periodicals became more prevalent with the introduction of the printing press, introducing and maintaining widespread discourse in the political and social issues of the day. “The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, represented many Victorian issues in the stories of its characters” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). As in the case of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, it is not surprising that Mary Shelley should produce a work such as Frankenstein out of this sort of environment. Both Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Shelley’s Frankenstein can be categorized as tragic dramas. This genre is classically defined as “a literary composition written to be performed by actors in which a central character called a tragic protagonist or hero suffers some serious misfortune which is not accidental and therefore meaningless, but is significant in that the misfortune is logically connected with the hero’s actions” (“Introduction to Greek Tragedy”, 2000). As time progressed, the term has been used to apply not only to theatre, but also to other forms of literature as well. While Dr. Faustus fits within the strict rules of the above definition as a play meant to be performed before an audience, Frankenstein retains many of the classic characteristics while remaining in the form of a fictional novel. Otherwise, the classical definition can be applied equally to both stories. Dr. Faustus determines that he must have more knowledge and makes a deal with the devil to attain it, heedless of the warnings he’s given or the feelings of misgivings he experiences. His ascent to power blinds him to the dangers and he realizes too late how his actions have led to his own doom. Similarly, Dr. Frankenstein receives warnings regarding the unnatural teachings of his early scientific teachers yet continues forward with his experiments until he, too, progresses beyond the point of no return. The monster he creates brings about his doom as surely as the bargain struck by Dr. Faustus. With this brief introduction to the works, it is appropriate to turn to a more critical reading of each of the texts in terms of how the protagonist undertakes his search for knowledge and the disastrous outcomes these actions have. At its opening, Dr. Faustus, the main character in Dr. Faustus, is introduced as a scholar who is famed the world over for his extensive knowledge, who feels he has reached the limits of knowledge yet still hungers for power. Tempted by the allure of magic, he trades his soul to the devil in exchange for 24 years of having everything he wants. Rather than using his new powers to free his country or help the poor, Faustus chooses to waste the opportunity he has to fulfill his desire for more knowledge by practicing the most base parlor tricks for the Emperor as well as several pranks on others. The base pranks he commits with his awesome power is best illustrated by the pranks he performs on the Pope at a special banquet in Act III, Scene 1. As the Pope crosses himself following an invisible Faustus grabbing his dishes out of the air, Faustus tells him “Well, there’s the second time. Aware the third; / I give you fair warning. / [The POPE crosses himself again, and FAUSTUS hits him a box / of the ear; and they all run away.]” (Marlowe, 1996). This scene is significant in the context of the Renaissance ideals in that these actions would have horrified the Catholic contingents of the audience while still frightening the less rigid but still God-fearing faction of the Protestants. The concept that magical means of corruption were entirely possible is also brought forward earlier in the play when Dr. Faustus first undertakes his doomed journey. Although Mephastophilis, the devil’s servant, tells Faustus nothing but the truth, including the horrors he suffers wherever he goes, Faustus focuses on those who would deceive him such as Cornelius and the evil devil. Trying to make the study of magic seem like the best thing that ever happened to him, Cornelius tells Faustus “the miracles that magic will perform / will make thee vow to study nothing else” (Marlowe, 1996: Act 1, Scene 1) while the evil angel distracts Faustus from thoughts of repentance to “think of honour and of wealth” (Marlowe, 1996: Act 1, Scene 5) instead. Faustus continues to deceive himself that he’s doing the right thing for his own well-being despite repeated feelings of trepidation and warnings from others such as the good angel and the old man – “I might prevail / To guide thy steps unto the way of life, / By which sweet path thou mayst attain the goal / That shall conduct thee to celestial rest!” (Marlowe, 1996: Act III, Scene III). Dr. Faustus is provided the truth from the beginning and suffers eternally for his complete deceit of himself. It is in this respect that the play is seen as a satire of Renaissance humanism, in which it was believed that man had the supreme power to determine his own fate. “The character of Dr. Faustus is, in conception, an ideal of humanism, but Marlowe has taken him and shown him to be damned nonetheless” (Larson, 2003). Faustus’ actions place him in direct opposition to the teachings of the church, leading eventually to his literally poking fun at its highest office, and bringing into the open the questions that were being asked at the time regarding the condition of the soul, the nature of man and the role of religion. He is very hedonistic in that his only thoughts after gaining his power are for personal fulfillment of worldly pleasures and immediate gratification. However, his approach is anything but the willful, self-indulgent actions one might expect of a person willing to behave in this fashion. “He exhibits, in his search for power, anything but animal passion; he indeed exhibits a chilling logic as he talks himself out of the possible delights of heaven. Not only is he intelligent, he also demonstrates a broad base of learning, another quality admired and upheld by humanists” (Larson, 2003). While he continues to dream of accomplishing great and wonderful things for the benefit of all mankind, Faustus cannot seem to shake himself of the decadent lifestyle he has adopted. “His downfall is woven into the fact that he is and will always be human – thus, flawed. Marlowe creates a character who is intelligent, broad-based in his education, logical, and poetic … and still damned” (Larson, 2003). In this sense, Marlowe reinforces the traditional beliefs that salvation can only be attained through faithfulness to God and the teachings of the church, but nevertheless questions the ability of the church to lead its parishioners to the proper path, as is evidenced in his teasing of the Pope. The character embellished by Marlowe sets out on a search for knowledge that leads to his destruction that is completely in keeping with the ideals and beliefs of Marlowe’s contemporaries. Victor Frankenstein suffers from a similar lack of foresight or heedfulness in his endeavors in Shelley’s novel written in the Victorian era. While he was creating his creature, he could only envision something beautiful and wonderful despite the fact that his instructors had warned him of the unnatural teachings of those ‘pseudo-scientists’ he had admired in his earlier years. “The ancient teachers of this science,’ said he [Frankenstein’s first professor], ‘promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera” (Shelley, 1993: 40). He purposefully and intentionally turned his back on the natural world as a means of concentrating on discovering the secret of bringing life to inanimate material, a process in which he was “forced to spend days and night in vaults and charnel-houses. My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings” (Shelley, 1993: 45) while “my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature” (Shelley, 1993: 49). As in the case of Dr. Faustus, Shelley structures her novel around some of the more concerning features of her time period, primarily the emergence of the factory and the machines that were replacing human workers in what was becomes a frightening question regarding the worth of a human. Despite the few warnings he’d received and the obvious challenge to the natural order of things, Frankenstein continued his search for deep knowledge, continued to work on the creature he had started, continued to envision it as a beautiful thing that would give all homage to him and remained unable to foresee the true nature of what he was doing until it was too late and the living monster stood facing him in all its horrendous grotesqueness. Shelley’s protagonist makes a similar bid for knowledge beyond that of the ‘modern man’ when he attempts to create life on his own terms. “Victor Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus seeks to attain the knowledge of the Gods, to enter the sphere of the creator rather than the created” (Bushi, 2002). This is in keeping with the signs of the times in which men continued to work on new designs for machines that were intended to replace the hands and minds of human workers within the factories. Like these men who created machines that performed more uniform work at faster rates for less expenditure, Frankenstein envisioned himself creating a better human than the one created by God, presuming he could somehow circumvent the powers of nature established by God to impose the better, stronger and more economic powers of man. “The deification of science as described in Shelley’s work depends upon the defiance of God. Victor is at first charmed by natural science because of the grand dreams of its masters in seeking power and immortality” (Bushi, 2002). In his pursuit of knowledge, Frankenstein is able to completely push aside any of the compunctions against his actions that normal men may face, braving the worms and other decaying matter of the charnel houses to develop his messy workshop in which he pieces together his oversized creation using terms that are as applicable to the feminine role of procreation as well as the mechanic’s role of machination. This, too, is consistent with the times. “The comment that seems evident in Frankenstein is that God has abandoned Man; the progression of history sees Man abandon God in the Victorian era” (Bushi, 2002). In the end, of course, the creation of the monster leads to chaos and the ruin of Frankenstein’s entire family, beginning with the most innocent. Frankenstein’s search for the knowledge of the gods has led only to the ruin of his soul. After examining the various factors that characterized the Renaissance and the Victorian periods of history as well as the genre in which these works were produced and a critical understanding of the stories involved as they pertain to the pursuit of knowledge, it becomes a simple matter to see numerous similarities between Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both works were produced during a time of profound religious, social and economic change during which concentration on the arts and literature gained significant attention and esteem. In these changing times, both Marlowe and Shelley questioned the long-standing religious tenets of their contemporaries, openly exploring the possibilities of mankind going beyond the normal understandings of men and into the realm of the gods. For Marlowe, this was through the use of magic, which was the science of his time, while Shelley used real-life scientific ideas that were prevalent in her time. Thus, each man attained his otherworldly knowledge through the study of science and through this science, became capable of unleashing frightening power upon the surface of the earth. Although both men set out with good intentions, neither was able to bring about the supreme good they had envisioned due to the very human quality of fallibility. However, both men can be seen as pursuing selfish goals and dreams of aggrandizement as Faustus openly admits and Frankenstein sheepishly admits years later. Faustus was unable to resist the temptations of the moment and the flesh while Frankenstein was equally unable to overcome the weakness of his flesh to defeat the monster he had introduced. Through their pursuit of this otherworldly, powerful knowledge of the gods, each man found only his own doom and little or nothing was gained by the remainder of human society as a result. Thus, in both works, the power of God is reinforced while the power of man is again reduced to previously understood terms. Although each story was written in its own time period, using language, events, actions, motives and means consistent with the knowledge base and ideologies of the time, Dr. Faustus and Frankenstein each manage to tell a similar story of a man who seeks knowledge he was never meant to have and suffering supreme punishment as a result. This is not an accident. Each story was created during a time of tremendous change in the way people thought, their conception regarding God and the afterlife and their notion of what was possible in the real world in which they lived. In each case, the expectations of the age were often far-flung and frightening, creating a backlash of traditional sentiment and concern for the plight of man if he pushes too far beyond his natural realm. While each story highlights the need to remain within specific boundaries of behavior, each also admits to a possibility of expanding beyond them if the inherent fallibility of man can ever be sufficiently overcome. References Bushi, Ruth. (2002). “The Author is Become a Creator-God: The Deification of Creativity in Relation to Frankenstein.” Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. Available online 17 February 2007 from “Introduction to Greek Tragedy.” (2000). Classics Technology Center. Available online 17 February 2007 from < http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/netshots/tragedy.htm> Larson, Jason. (2003). “Dr. Faustus: Selling his Soul to Make a Point.” Luminarium. Available 17 February 2007 from Marlowe, C. (1616; reprint 1996). “Dr. Faustus”. Masterplots. Ed. S. Flecher. Salem Press, Inc. Shelley, Mary. (1993). Frankenstein. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. “(The) Sixteenth Century.” (2007). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Available online 17 February 2007 from “(The) Victorian Age.” (2007). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Available online 17 February 2007 from Read More