Doctor Faustus Impotent?: Fantasizing the Male Body in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten

The notion of masculine sexual potency relies on the fiction of the penis as phallus. It is, however, the penis that perpetually challenges the phallus as privileged signifier of masculinity. This article discusses how the Historia von D. Johann Fausten—one of the most popular fictions of masculine potency in early modern Germany—represents a cultural fantasy about the penis as phallus. It shows that the transformation of the male body into the masculine body requires the transformation of the penis into the phallus as well as the construction of non-phallic 'others'—both male and female.