SOURCE: "Reconstruction of the Faust Book: The Disputations," in PMLA, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 3, June, 1963, pp. 175-89.

In the following essay, Haile pieces together several variations of the German Faust Book in order to establish as accurately as possible the original, uncorrupted version of that text.

Toward the close of the last century, one of the busiest areas of literary research centered about the Faust Book. The Faust image, that unique gift of Germany to Western tradition, had fascinated scholars and critics for over a hundred years, and the oldest printed texts of the Faust Book had long since been established and edited. During the nineteenth century, however, further documentary references to the historical Faust had been accumulating, while at the same time researchers had gained a more complete and accurate knowledge of the scope of the Faust legend together with its relationship to similar sorcerers' tales. Then, beginning...