"Now I Die Eternally": Doctor Faustus and the Problem of Scale.

MARLOWE, Christopher, 1564-1593; EARLY modern English drama; MICROCOSM & macrocosm; MODERN literature; PHYSICIANS; LOCAL knowledge

This article turns to Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to examine how early modern theatricality is constituted by the negotiation of incommensurate scales of being and knowing. Faustus rescales eternal time and cosmic space within the affordances and constraints of theatrical practice. By attending to shifts of scale—between now and eternity, local and universal knowledge, here and elsewhere, microcosm and macrocosm—that serve as engines of Faustus 's formal innovations, this article shows why Elizabethan drama is a vital archive of macrocosmic thinking. Ultimately, this article proposes that scale-attentive scholarship focused on the peculiarities of early modern literature can transform our understanding of relations between literary objects and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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