What is the secularized, capitalistic, art-world equivalent to being torn limb-from-limb by the devil? Find out in our concluding episode on Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. 

-English translation of Mann’s Doktor Faustus

-Danny Riley, “Interpreting Joy: A Guide to Interpreting Beethoven’s Ninth”

In observance of the spooky season we're posting our conversation with historian Matthew J. Cressler on the relationship between Catholicism and horror cinema. We explore the sub-genre of Catholic Horror through our analysis of two recent films centering on the Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth (1925-2016): William Friedkin’s (!) documentary The Devil and Father Amorth (2017) and Julius Avery’s horror/dramedy/superhero film The Pope’s Exorcist (2023). The conversation was enlightening and just a delight. Please be on the lookout for all of Matthew’s great work on Catholicism and horror:

“The Netflix Series That Should Make Religious People Uncomfortable” The Atlantic, 10/25/21 (on Midnight Mass)

“Exorcists, Abusers, and When Catholic History is Horror” The Revealer, 05/10/22

“You Can’t Have a Catholic Imagination without Horror” U.S. Catholic, 10/28/22

And the man’s making comics about this at Bad Catholics / Good Trouble !

This episode: we can’t leave well enough alone — another literary elaboration of the Faust legend by a member of the Mann family, Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947.) We discuss: why learning is actually interesting to young people, the problems with studying theology and the humanities, why the devil owns music, whether committing yourself to creative excellence always means a deal with the devil, and what you’re not allowed to say about hell. 

English translation of Mann’s Doktor Faustus

The “Jeremy Brett” version of Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Three Klauses walk into a bar…

This episode centers on literary wunderkind/prodigal son Klaus Mann’s attack on Nazi Germany (and an ex-lover, and possibly his dad, the canonical novelist Thomas Mann), in the form of the 1936 novel Mephisto. We discuss the film adaptation, what it means to compare demons to the Nazis, the book’s relationship to Goethe’s Faust, and the politics of race in the novel/film. 

-Klaus Mann, Mephisto: Ein Roman einer Karriere

-Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark

-Farayi Mungazi and Olivia Marks-Woldman “Black people were Hitler’s victims too – that must not be forgotten” 

-“Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany,” Holocaust Encyclopedia (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

-Colm Tóibín: “I Could Sleep With All Of Them” (On Mann family dynamics in London Review of Books)

Hilary Mantel's 2005 novel Beyond Black is the topic of discussion for this episode, continuing our series on devil-themed novels. This one's about psychics and their demons in neo-liberal Britain on the eve of Brexit.

-An interview Mantel did on this novel for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

-The Guardian's obituary for Mantel from September 2022.

-Etymology of "Old Nick"

Summer is for trashy beach novels and Dennis Wheatley's 1934 The Devil Rides Out definitely qualifies. We discuss problematic genre fiction, fake rituals, the rhetorical trap of being asked "do you believe in evil?" and racial demonology of the late British empire.

Some useful scholarship: Timothy Jones, "The Black Mass as Play: Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out" M/C Journal, 17(4).

The boys are back to discuss Frank E. Peretti's 1986 Christian supernatural thriller This Present Darkness.

Back to discuss the historical Faust, "Faustian science," Sylvia Federici, Sycorax and Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, Martin Heidegger's anti-Semitism, The Devil's Miner, and the future of the podcast.

Klaus and Travis go the distance to close out Goethe's Faust cycle.

One video playlist for the Peter Stein 2001 production of Goethe's Faust II.

In this first episode of 2023 we discuss the 2017 film "First Reformed," written and directed by Paul Schrader, starring Ethan Hawke and Amanda Seyfried. A Protestant minister experiences personal and planetary crisis, making sense of his rage and despair with apocalyptic scripture and radical environmentalism.

As is always the case when we do a film episode, there are spoilers. So go check out the film first if you want the best listening experience.

This episode is the second installment in our series of conversations on Dante's Inferno with Dr. Akash Kumar.

This week we are blessed to be joined by Dr. Akash Kumar for a lively discussion of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century Divine Comedy, and, of course, the Inferno in particular, with all its demons, mythological monsters, personal enemies of Dante, and other tragic figures.

Digital Dante

Akash Kumar, "Teddy Roosevelt, Dante, and the Man in the Arena"

Interactive (hilarious) map of Dante's hell

This episode we finish up Faust 1!

Faust 1 (German text)

Faust 1 (English translation)

Faust 1 (video of performance dir. by Peter Stein, 2000 with English subtitles)

Scenes discussed from Faust 1: Studierzimmer (study) - Hexenküche (witches' kitchen.)

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Faust 1 (German text)

Faust 1 (English translation)

Faust 1 on the stage (Peter Stein, 2000) (no subtitles but better video quality)

Faust 1 (same version, with English subtitles)

Part 4 of our Faust series brings us to Goethe (1749-1832) and the way he reinvented the legend for his own time, or, in as he has Faust say, “take what you have inherited from your forefathers and make it your own.” In this episode, Klaus introduces the work, the author, and the first few scenes. 

Faust 1 (German text)

Faust 1 (English translation)

Faust 1 on the stage (Peter Stein, 2000) (no subtitles but better video quality)

Faust 1 (same version, with English subtitles)

Celebrating Halloween this year with the seasonally atmospheric 1960 film City of the Dead (released as Horror Hotel in the USA) starring Christopher Lee and Venetia Stevenson, directed by John Llewellyn Moxey.

Amazing special guest Dr. Katherine Walker takes us through Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (ca. 1592) in part 3 of our Faust-cycle-series. Check out her book Instinct, Knowledge and Science on the Early Modern Stage out soon!

Note: we were being attacked by aliens and ghosts during the recording of this episode and this impacted the audio quality but we carried on heroically nevertheless.

Along the way we discuss the lush 1968 Richard Burton / Elizabeth Taylor film version of Dr. Faustus.

Reach out to us on Twitter @heads_ten & Dr. Walker @KatieNWalker

Getting warmed up for Halloween with the 1973 Hammer Studios film The Satanic Rites of Dracula (dir. Alan Gibson), starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Faust is back, ready to party, and hopefully get things squared away with the hosts of hell.

This is the first episode of a mini-series-within-a-season devoted to the legend of Faust, a guy who was too clever for his own good and got mixed up with the wrong people--the kind who make you sign a contract in blood. The text discussed here is the anonymously composed 1587 Historia Von D. Johann Fausten.