Heaven and Hell

This page was created by students in my Spring 2009 ENG206 British Literature class. Students were asked to find out information about early modern English views of heaven and hell in relation to Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Questions of comments can be made by email.

This site depicts hell as Dante had depicted it in The Inferno, but with a modern twist. This "twist" is that hell molds and shapes itself to fit the times, so in Dante's time the different levels of hell were reserved for the sinners of the time (occupations, current infamous crimes, etc) whereas currently the levels of hell are molded for the sins that are occurring today.

The culture in the time of Marlowe viewed hell as a state of mind more than a place. It seemed to me that hell was sort of the state f not being in "heaven." It is the state of being in which everything that was good in your life is taken away and you are left to be miserable. So far in the play about Dr. Faustus selling his soul to the devil I feel that spirits, good and bad, were thought to be commonly on the earth interacting with the living and a constant battle between good and evil was always present. I feel like the characters react much more understandingly in the play then people would today.
--Kelly Sherman

In the passage it explains that the vision of what hell is like is beginning to change. It is slowly being viewed less as a fiery place underground, with flames and brimstone. Only more so as a place of isolation from god, as the passage states, “a deep funk”. People in the 18^th century may have seen it differently. For a time hell was viewed as fiery place, an incentive to try to do well and aim for heaven, not that most people would not use that incentive today, no one wants to burn up forever, let alone be in solitary confinement. In the 18^th century, the culture would have reacted to the thought of hell more abruptly than people would today. Today, you could choose to believe what you want, and people will either agree or disagree, but usually leave you to think what you want. Back then that probably would not be the case.

During the time of Marlowe there were several views of heaven and hell. Building from ancient times, such as the Greeks who believed everyone went to Hades but the wicked would suffer, and their texts from the new testament heaven was a place of paradise while hell was a place of torment. Depending on the time or person the varying theology would have an effect on how a person would perceive those places and how Marlowe's work would be interpreted. It would be very important for a person to understand what those people believe at those times so we could get a better idea of what his work meant.

When I think of hell and early modern Europe, Dante's Inferno comes to mind. I typed in, "hell in early modern Europe" in the search engine and sure enough Dante's Inferno was littered throughout the search page. According to this source, the Inferno (which is the latter part of Dante's Divine Comedy), derived from humanity's issues to address them. The Inferno shows the levels of hell and what they entail. The Divine Comedy was a major text of the time that greatly influenced the early modern view of hell and the devil.

According to the information I found, the view of the Devil in the early modern period was similar to the views that are still used today. People seemed to be much more superstitious about the Devil and the way he works. Back then, he was viewed as the worst of all evils, who lured people away from Christ and he was quite the "trickster". Many still viewed him as not being holy or worthy of redemption, but many felt that he went about tricking people into giving up their souls. He would compromise something that they really wanted and would lure them away from God. Just like in The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, the devil uses a compromise to take Dr. Faustus' soul from him. He gave him what he wanted most and in return he claimed his soul. But since Dr. Faustus received what he wanted, he felt that his soul was a simple trade.

This article mentions hell as a dark and gruesome place where pain and suffering are always happening. But it does mention a similar purgatory, which was a part of hell were no torture took place. The other side of hell, is not happy but is not as dark and dangerous as the damned hell. The Damned of hell was the worst, it was obviously associated with fire and death.

--Joe Citro