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العنوان
Selected Postmodern Cinematic Adaptations of christopher Marlowe’s
The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1589?):
المؤلف
Selected Postmodern Cinematic Adaptations of christopher Marlowe’s
Hanna, Amgad Maher Mikhail.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / أمجد ماهر ميخائيل حنا
مشرف / كرمة محمد سامي فريد كرمة محمد سامي فريد
مناقش / هبة حسان عبد الحميد العبادي
مناقش / سمر محمد عبد السلام
تاريخ النشر
2022.
عدد الصفحات
189 P. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
ماجستير
التخصص
الفنون البصرية والفنون المسرحية
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2022
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية الألسن - قسم اللغة الانجليزية
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
(1589?) has not had the chance of a secular reading outside the conventionally context-bound
and, therefore, religious scope of classical Marlovian criticism. Nonetheless, Carl Jung’s
archetypal psychology raises the possibility for a brand-new psychological understanding of the
play, particularly that the motif of the Faustian pact holds a special place in Jungian psychology
as one of the most accurate mythological portrayals of the role played by the trickster (shadow)
archetype in human individuation. However, ironically enough, this understanding has not
inspired any archetypal examination of the play, expect for Kenneth L. Golden’s brief 1985
essay: “Myth, Psychology and Marlowe’s ‘Dr. Faustus.’” That is why the thesis depicts the role
played by the Jungian trickster, personified by the devil Mephistopheles, in the damnation of
Faustus, offering the first detailed Jungian reading of the play. Furthermore, it makes use of the
recent theories of Jungian film scholars to apply the same archetypal understanding of the
Faustian pact to two comic cinematic adaptations of Doctor Faustus that cast a female devil:
Harold Ramis’ Bedazzled (2000) and Alec Baldwin’s Shortcut to Happiness (2007), taking into
consideration the main shifts they introduce to the Marlovian trickster and their significance.
The structure of the thesis is divided as such: an introduction of the overall idea and
perspective of the thesis, chapter one: The Archetypal Trickster/ Trickstar in Therapeutic Drama
and Cinema, chapter two: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus Revisited, and chapter three: Successful
Individuation and the Female Trickstar in Faustian Comic Satanic Films: Harold Ramis’
Bedazzled (2000) and Alec Baldwin’s Shortcut to Happiness (2007).
The first chapter arranges the detailed itinerary of the journey. It presents all the
theories employed by the thesis in the study of the Faustian trickster on both the stage and
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the screen, establishing the connection between them. The chapter begins by contrasting
the traditional views of mythologists, folklorists, sociologists, cultural philosophers, and
theologians on the trickster figure with Jung’s trickster/shadow archetype that rectifies
the figure’s indefinability from their perspectives through his universality. It, then,
elaborates the high position of the Faustian myth in Jungian psychology, which qualifies
it for providing a 21st
-century reading of Marlowe’s play and its film adaptations,
particularly with the aid of its latest cinematic development: the Jungian-informed screen
studies. In order to set the stage for this process of semiotic psycho-cinematic analysis,
the chapter introduces the hybrid subgenre of the comic satanic films with a female devil
the two films represent as well as the theories utilized to clarify their cathartic comicality
and femininity. Finally, it concludes with demystifying the therapeutic process of Jungian
film analysis that tracks the role played by the trickster in the fulfillment of the
individuation of the film protagonist, which in turn leads to that of the spectator as well
and the tools of semiotic film analysis employed in the process.
Chapter two begins the practical application of the Jungian framework established
in chapter one by carrying out the first detailed archetypal study of Marlowe’s version of
the Faustian myth in an attempt to depart from the customarily religious nature of
classical Faustian criticism. That is why it begins with calling attention to the critical
injustice characteristic of the five- century history of classical Marlovian criticism in
general, which it presents in the detailed “Marlovian Reader” appendix, before it reviews
the essentially theological scope of this criticism as the most conspicuous feature of its
injustice. Therefore, it offers its alternative archetypal reading of the play with the object
of showcasing a sample remedy to this injustice. Finally, it elaborates on the original
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cathartic/therapeutic influence of the play on its immediate Jacobean audience with the
aim of providing a better understanding of its postmodern counterpart exerted by the
Faustian cinematic adaptations scrutinized in the third chapter.
The third chapter continues the practical application of the Jungian framework
through the application of the psycho-cinematic approach devised by the thesis in the first
chapter to the two selected works. It demonstrates the competency of the new female
trickstar/anima archetype as an effective agent for individuation via tracing the role she
plays in achieving the successful individuation of the postmodernist cinematic Faustian
hero and, by extension, the spectator. Meanwhile, it capitalizes on the tools of semiotic
film analysis to disclose how the archetype’s characteristics and role are mirrored
technically on the screen.