Faust - Norton Critical Editions Author:Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Walter Arndt (Translator) This edition includes Parts I and II complete. The backgrounds include the medieval Chapbook, the puppet play, and a surviving fragment of G.E. Lessing's Faust play. The author's plans and sketches, and a rich selection of his letters and comments to Eckermann, trace Goethe's lifelong involvement in the work, as does an analytical ta... more »ble showing the phases of composition. The contemporary reactions show how rapidly Faust came to be seen as a quintessential expression of German Romantic consciousness. The essays have been chosen to help readers perceive and understand Faust's extraordinary thematic and formal complexity.« less