and combined with occult arts such as alchemy and magic, this living tradition informs the work of 'Magus' figures such as Pico della Mirandola, Marcilio Ficino, Trithemius, Johannes Reuchlin, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Paracelsus and John Dee, who are reflected in the Faust tradition and in Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest. The second part investigates the dual legacy of the Magus. A counterpoint between a law-governed objective material world and an occult visionary pursuit of the divine potential of the human imagination is traced through the examples of Johan Kepler, Robert Fludd, Isaac Newton, William Blake, Rudyard Kipling, Aleister Crowley, W.B. Yeats, Wolfgang Pauli and C.G. Jung. In the third part, textual analysis reveals how attention to these Faustian themes opens new and exciting critical perspectives in appreciating the works of postcolonial writers, in particular Dimetos by Athol Fugard, Disappearance by David Dabydeen, Omeros by Derek Walcott, and the novels of Wilson Harris. |