Shaping a Nation and Transforming Identity: Ovidian Mythic Allusions in William Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream and John Miltons Lycidas

This thesis examines the ways in which the classical underpinnings of two major Renaissance works shape the exploration of national identity in those works. By identifying mythological allusion as a semiotic system, we can understand how its presence in written texts informed the cultural, social, and political identities of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers. Mythic allusions function as signs in a literary text which signify greater meaning, and when an audience has access to the collective body of classical knowledge, they can piece together the cultural implications of the allusions presence within the text. Examining the mythological allusions in Miltons <em>Lycidas </em>and Shakespeares <em>A Midsummer Nights Dream</em> allows us to construct some of the foundations of British national identity.