Close comparative examination of the Faust legend and the Biblical tale of the Fall reveals an analogous paradox in the nexus of good and evil in both stories. Identifying this paradox as a quintessential sine qua non of the Faust quest, this study traces its development through the Faust tradition's four most important literary the sixteenth-century German Chapbook, and the Faust works of Christopher Marlowe, Johann W. Goethe, and Thomas Mann.
Walter Hasenclever (1890-1940) is known primarily as an Expressionist writer. This critical study, the first comprehensive one in English, analyzes his entire oeuvre from his early Expressionist works to his newspaper feuilletons and the later satirical comedies, including several unpublished works. This analysis reveals that all of Hasenclever's writings, no matter whether Expressionist or satirical, share one basic and recurrent theme: protest against the injustices and hypocrisies of his age and his society.