Home › Glossary › Letter F

Faust

Literary Character
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The legendary scholar who sells his soul to the devil for knowledge and power; in poetry, he embodies ambition, the transgression of boundaries, the thirst for forbidden wisdom, and the tragic cost of hubris.

Detailed Definition
Faust, driven by insatiable curiosity, makes a pact with Mephistopheles, exploring the limits of human aspiration. In poetry, he symbolizes the quest for forbidden knowledge, the price of ambition, and the tension between reason and faith.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Goethe’s "Faust," the protagonist’s pact with Mephistopheles explores ambition and redemption; In Christopher Marlowe’s "Doctor Faustus," Faust’s final soliloquy is a poetic meditation on damnation; In W.H. Auden’s “New Year Letter,” Faust symbolizes modern intellectual despair; In T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Faustian bargains echo in spiritual emptiness; In Derek Walcott’s “Omeros,” Faust represents colonial knowledge’s moral cost; In modern poetry, Faust often signifies the artist’s dangerous pursuit of transcendence.
Additional Notes
Faust, the scholar who sells his soul for knowledge and power, embodies the dangers of unchecked ambition and the quest for transcendence; Goethe’s version shapes poetic treatments of Faust as a tragic hero seeking infinite experience—his pact with Mephistopheles raises questions about redemption, the limits of reason, and the cost of enlightenment, resonating in modernist and existential poetry.
Also Known As
Scholar of Damnation Pact-Maker with Mephistopheles Tragic Seeker
Skip to main content