Byron, Shelley and Goethe's Faust

Introduction

The first part of Goethe's dramatic poem Faust (1808), one of the great works of German literature, grabbed the attention of Byron and Percy Shelley in the 1810s, engaging them in a shared fascination that was to exert an important influence over their writings.

Study Focus

In this comparative study, Ben Hewitt explores the links between Faust and Byron's and Shelley's works, connecting Goethe and the two English Romantic poets in terms of their differing, intricately related experiments with epic.

Literary and Philosophical Dialogue

In so doing, Hewitt enters the three writers into a literary and philosophical dialogue concerning epic and tragic perspectives on human knowledge and potential — perspectives crucial to the very structure and significance of Goethe's masterpiece — and illuminates hitherto unacknowledged affinities between these key figures in Romantic literature, and between British and German Romanticisms.