Doctor Faustus

Why it’s on the list: Marlowe’s tragedy of a scholar who exhausts logic, medicine, law and divinity, then signs his soul to Lucifer for twenty-four years of Mephistopheles’ service — and spends the power mostly on conjuring tricks. The founding portrait of the specifically modern ambition, knowledge and mastery pursued without limit, framed as a damnation rather than an achievement.

Where I heard about it

• University of Austin — assigned in Modernity and the West on its Fall 2025 reading list (November 2025). Full curriculum: UATX Fall Reading List.
• Dissident Teacher — on A Library to Build Great Americans (December 2025), in the Ages 13-99+ band, listed as “Dr. Faustus” under Fiction.

About this edition

Written around 1592 and first printed in 1604 (the A-text); a substantially different B-text appeared in 1616, so length varies by edition. The last act is a man who can still repent at any moment and does not.

Connections

• UATX Fall Reading List — the curriculum this is assigned in.
• A Library to Build Great Americans — the second list to recommend it.
• Christopher Marlowe — the author.
• Literature — Elizabethan tragedy; Marlowe is Shakespeare’s exact contemporary.
• Ambition — the play is a case study in ambition that outruns any purpose to spend it on.
• Christianity — the stakes are a soul, and the last scene turns on whether repentance stays possible.