The figure of the mage is among the most alluring Renaissance characters. In plays from Marlowe's Dr. Faustus to Shakespeare's The Tempest, necromancers plumbed the depths of hermetic and occult knowledge to gain tremendous (and dangerous) power. Yet this figure wasn't mere literary invention, for Renaissance humanism was attracted to subjects magical, and often these characters were based on real personages. In particular, Dr. Faust, the wizard who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for knowledge and power, was drawn directly from the historical record, a mysterious and shadowy scholar who nonetheless endures in the countless permutations of his legend. In this lecture, join Dr. Ed Simon in a consideration of the "real" Dr. Faust.
Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, the editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books, and a staff writer for Literary Hub. A widely published writer, he is the author of over a dozen books, including Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain.
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