Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, having been written in the 19th century, was heavily influenced by the Romantic movement, as seen through three recurring romantic elements. The first of these three is the rejection of neoclassicism, and an emphasis of individual creativity and thought over logic and order. This element is best exemplified through Faust’s inability to ascertain the information he so seeks through logical methods, resulting in his attempts to use magic and subsequent blood-pact with Mephistopheles. He curses the “impossibility of knowledge,” further reiterating the idea that a neoclassical approach to information garners no success. Faust’s second predominant romantic element is that of a focus on the individual, namely the
