The first part of Goethe's dramatic poem Faust (1808), one of the great works of German literature, grabbed the attention of Byron and Percy Shelley in the 1810s, engaging them in a shared fascination that was to exert an important influence over their writings. In this comparative study, Ben Hewitt explores the links between Faust and Byron's and Shelley's works, connecting Goethe and the two English Romantic poets in terms of their differing, intricately related experiments with epic. In so doing, Hewitt enters the three writers into a literary and philosophical dialogue concerning 'epic' and 'tragic' perspectives on human knowledge and potential - perspectives crucial to the very structure and significance of Goethe's masterpiece - and illuminates hitherto unacknowledged affinities between these key figures in Romantic literature, and between British and German Romanticisms.

Ben Hewitt

Introduction: An Epic Connection Part I: Perspectives on Goethe's Faust 1. 'Eine Tragödie'? Goethe's Faust in Theory 2. Faust I in Romantic-period Britain Part II: Byron, Shelley, and Faust 3. Infernal Irony: Faust, Cain, and Byron's Later Poetry 4. The Un-Faustian Epic: Faust and Shelley's Prometheus Unbound 5. Conclusion: Between Two Worlds