Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: A Postcolonial Reading

This paper argues that Marlowe s Doctor Faustus incorporates multiple degrees of domination that include the acquisition of subjectively intentional knowledge closely connected to colonialism. The dramatic text reveals the imperialist, colonialist tendencies in their beginnings. Four shades of imperialism are discerned in the play: historicism, knowledge as possession, economic exploitation and actual colonization. The depiction of the East in the play is investigated following Edward Said s analyses, deducing that the magnitude of Renaissance Marlowe’s project is of a different nature: it is global, appropriating European countries as well. The Orient, though historically targeted by British expansionist inclinations, is more connected with Faustus quest for knowledge. Another assumption presented is the interpretation of magic as a metaphor for alien knowledge imported from the East and declared heretic by the Church, which may throw more light on the paradoxical convergence of magic and empirical science in Faustus dilemma