Dr. Faustus

If you made a deal with demon, why would you do that and what would you sacrifice in return? Firstly, when I came across with this question, I deeply thought about my favorite tv series Supernatural which is still popular in these days. As far as I remember from Supernatural, you should not make a deal with demons.

Like everybody guess,  this question is related to Dr. Faustus which we mentioned this week. Dr Faustus is a doctor who sells his soul to demon called Mephastophilis for knowledge. According to the movie we watched this week in the course, Faustus is a doctor who is  arrogant and he doesn’t believe in God so he believes that God doesn’t give us a chance to choose.  I think he makes a deal with demon because of his own thoughts. He sells his soul because he thinks that if there is no God, then there is no hell as well although Mephastophilis warns him against hell.

The another author who examines this topic is Goethe. He was affected by Christopher Marlowe and his work Dr. Faustus. Goethe mentioned  a person who  bet a demon on his work. Although two play looks like the same, Goethe discussed the topic in a different way. He examined Faustus as a person who was not defeated to demon whereas Marlowe examined Faustus as a person who lost the deal with demon.

Consequently, devil was mentioned by authors many times and they were affected from each other. It reflects the characteristic features of age they were written. I think it shows weakness of human. 

A General View of Last Course

Last lesson, Renaissance and Shakespeare were the major topics. I like attending this course because when we have discussed about a new topic, I want to have information about it more than we have studied. So, I search on my own about it and learn many more useful information. These information are usually permanent.  Then, I want to mention Renaissance period and a little bit Shakespeare.

Renaissance was the period of enlightenment in the field of literature, art, science etc. This period is also described as rebirth. Starting of this period shows differences according to countries. The most important feature of this period was humanism. The idea of Christianity in Middle Age lost its value and humanism gained importance. Humanists dealt with this world, on the contrary Christianity dealt with the other world. According to humanism, this world is created in order to be made use of by humans. All caused self-discovery of humans. Therefore, this idea was reflected to literature and works. 

Shakespeare was one of the most important writers of this time and he used humanism on his works. Because he was visionary, he was described as ''not just one period, he's for all periods.'' in a poetry of Ben Jonson. Some researchers say that Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were the same person because their works were close to each other. Although Shakespeare had no education and lack of travel experiences, how could he write all of his works? I think, he was so genius. 

To sum up, learning many new historical events and examining different works of art are enjoyable. I can not wait to see all different works and different thoughts reflecting works.

A Glance of Middle Ages

In the last Literature course, firstly we talked about Middle Ages and Europe. Then, we continued with Canterbury Tales. We learned a lot of new and useful information. There were things to make me interested in this course. So, I want to share some of them.

One of the most important things that I deeply paid attention in the last course while we were talking about Middle Ages was there was no freedom of thought in Europe. Also, there were no scientists because the church did not allow to think. But at that times, The Ottoman Empire had medresseh in which was taught positive sciences and moral. This showed how Ottomans was different from Europe in terms of education at that times. After the Crusades, the West took many inventions from us like paper, compass, powder etc. Western people got a lot of information from us and they realized they had been deceived by church for a long while. 

The another thing that I want to share is Canterbury Tales whose writer was Geoffrey Chaucer. They are stories that were told by pilgrims to make their travel more enjoyable while they were on road to visit the grave of St. Thomas Backet. Geoffrey intended to create 120 tales but only 24 tales was created because he died. 
Geoffrey always used irony and ridicule in these tales and he critisized society. So, he was the first author and poet to write about real characters and criticize the society. Tales are about topics of non-religious and daily life. 

Consequently, literature can shape social life and people's thought. Thanks to literary works, people can be enlightened by authors and philosophers even if they had lived in dark period.