Published by . M. Zhirmunsky . This book has the task to trace the historical documents and monuments of fiction the formation and development of the German folk legend about Dr. Faust. Goethe received world ideological and artistic significance as the plot basis of the greatest work of classical German literature. The legend of Faust was formed around a historical figure , The People's Imagination , Personalities, bearing the imprint of the great progressive movements of human thought of its time , Renaissance and Reformation , Reflected , but, these ideological movements in all their real historical contradictions , to varying degrees characteristic even of the advanced people of that era. Therefore, these phenomena are refracted in the legendary image of Faust through the distorting prism of the medieval worldview.