Correll, Mark R. “The Faustian Century: German Literature and Culture in the Age of Luther and Faustus.” Fides Et Historia45, no. 2 (Summer, 2013): 125-127.
Abstract: The Faustian Century uses the Faust legends to cast a vision of the sixteenth century from the perspective of a mature Lutheran hegemony at the century’s end rather than the more familiar viewpoint from the origins of the Protestant movement. These authors conceive that Lutheranism in power gave a stronger definition to the era than Luther in ascendency. The Faustian Century uses the Faust legend as a lens through which to see this troubled time of religious violence and legally enforced orthodoxy. While a historical Faust may have lived and worked in the first half of the sixteenth century, the popular vision of Faust that inspired Marlowe, Goethe, Mann, and others was initiated a half century later by various anonymous authors in the central Holy Roman Empire: “Historia vnd geschieht Doctor Johannis Faustj des Zauberers” (ca. 1572-1585), the expanded narrative Historia von D. Johann Fausten / dem weitbeschreyten Zauberer und Schwarzkünstler (1587), and the third but less important Faust narrative of 1599 by Georg Rudolf Widmann, D. Iohannes Faustus ein weitberuffener Schwarzkünstler vnd Ertzzäuberer (hereafter referred to collectively as the Eaustbuch).
