Doktor Faustus - Allusions and Sources

Allusions and Sources

Doctor Faustus is constructed in richly allusive and symbolic terms. H.T. Lowe-Porter refers to the three strands of the book:

'the German scene from within, and its broader, its universal origins; the depiction of an art not German alone but vital to our whole civilization; music as one instance of the arts and the state in which the arts find themselves today ; and, finally, the invocation of the daemonic.' (Translator's note, vi.)

Mann wrote a book about the writing of this novel, 'The Genesis of Doctor Faustus' (1949).