A Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The Tragedy Of Doctor Faustus

As a pioneer of Elizabethan drama,Christopher Marlowe lays the foundation for the development of English drama and gives enlightenment to his fellow playwrights.The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus(B-Text,1616)has received wide popularity and brought great reputation to him ever since its publication.In this thesis,the author intends to analyze the abnormal behaviors of Faustus in the id,the ego,and the superego to explore the cause of tragic death of Doctor Faustus based on the personality structure from Sigmund Freud from five aspects,that is,forsaking the four traditional fields of knowledge and embracing Black Art,abandoning loftiness and pursuing pettiness,slowing in taking actions and speeding in receiving,vacillating between irresolution and resolution,and conflicting between medieval values and Renaissance values.Based on the demonstrations of the conflict and imbalance of those three forces and the fact of the mixture of uninhibited and excessive desires and fragile and scarce moralities,this paper argues that Faustus' weakness and vulnerability in his ego contributes to his final downfall.