With the choice of his title, Mann consciously placed himself within the long tradition of Faust literature. Thorough as usual, he studied this tradition by immersing himself in treatments of the theme that reached from Christopher Marlowe's Renaissance play to Heinrich Heine's Romantic ballet.

Among all of these, only the chapbook Doctor Faust, first published in Frankfurt in 1587, exercised any direct influence on Mann's novel. Besides taking over certain elements of the plot, Mann frequently imitates in word choice and syntax the archaic style of his source and at one point actually allows Leverkuhn to take leave of the world in the precise words of the chapbook.

Some critics of twentieth century literature have spoken of the "terminal" novel as a distinctly modern creation in which authors have set out to take stock of Western man's cultural universe with an ultimate seriousness and an unmitigated pessimism...