Brooks, Cleanth. "The Unity of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus" in A Shaping of Joy Studies in the Writer's Craft, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972, pp, 367-80
Brooks responds to those critics who fail to see the unity of Doctor Faustus, Brooks realizes that if Marlowe's agreement with the devil damns his soul to hell, then the play, in structural terms, has no conflict, offers no possible dramatic development, and becomes merely "elegiac." Admitting the weakness of the play's middle section, Brooks believes that the sheer force of Marlowe's poetry holds the play together. Thematically, Brooks sees the play as exploring various types of knowledge: of the self, of the natural world, and of the divine. While Marlowe's treatment of this theme has medieval elements, Brooks describes his use of demonic apparatus in essentially psychological terms, noting that "the.....
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