Ein anders unfester Text

Abstract

Printed anonymously in 1587, the henceforth immensely successful Historia von D. Johann Fausten is both a textual and a narratologic provocation. This is brought about by the polyphony of sources and genres compiled by its author which do not produce a homogeneous whole. But it is also the result of a specific, hybrid conception of text and narration, which intendedly creates ambiguity and scatters irritation everywhere. A valid interpretation is thereby sheerly impossible, which presumably is the most significant reason for the long and controversial discussions among readers and re-tellers, running from Christopher Marlowe (1592) and the Wagnerbuch (1593) up to Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947). This article explores some essential textual aspects of this inexhaustible narrative, such as the discursive and hermeneutic predominance of intradiegetic instances (first of all Mephostophiles) and the decommissioning of the narrator by inserted documents, transtextual references, and primarily by paratexts which almost lead a life of their own on the margins of the story in a proper sense. In this way, the text gets fluid, and its reception becomes an endless search for a coherent meaning which isn’t right there.