ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the final scene of Faust I, 'Kerker', as an example of a level of self-conscious, ironic artifice that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe added to the play during the last stage of his work on it. The sub-title Goethe gave Faust, 'Eine Tragodie', suggests that the play needs to be considered in relation to that genre, with its long history of development and an equally long history of theoretical attempts at defining its characteristics. Taking this sub-title as a starting point, the chapter develops a reading of Faust I as a work on the border between tragedy and something other than tragedy, namely the 'epic'. It highlights some of the deeper reasons why Faust I might have presented itself as a political problem during the Romantic period, and why George Gordon Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley would have been interested in this.
