SOURCE: "Faust and the Fall," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXXII, No. 3, Summer, 1985, pp. 315-31.

In the following essay, Hoelzel offers an interpretation of the Faust story in general and the Historia in particular as deriving much of its archetypal power fromits relationship to the story of Adam and Eve's transgression in Genesis.

Scarcely any legend or myth has so fired the imagination of writers or so captivated their readers as the Faust legend, the story of a man who willfully risks eternal doom by trading with the devil for a limited period of superhuman knowledge and power. The literary tradition surrounding the legend that took root in the sixteenth century has developed into one of the most enduring and ubiquitous themes in Western literature. Even a casual glance at the annual reports appearing in the Faust-Blätter¹ plainly reveals the tradition's unflagging vitality, as year after year...