Using Petrarch, Ovid and Virgil Anew: Framing and Reframing Diana in the Canon

Abstract

This article applies the notion of framing to Shakespeare’s reception of the classical Tradition to trace how the selection of the sources from which the definition of the myth of Diana arises is reworked on the Shakespearean stage. To confront the various sources of the mythological figure of Diana, be they from Ovid, Virgil or Petrarch, is to analyse their interactions, their bricolage that draws on a common cultural material in a more or less deliberate, elusive or subversive fashion. This leads us to see how Shakespeare frames the classical heritage and thus appropriates
it through the lens of the myth of Diana. My contention is that Shakespearean drama frames the classical heritage to put it into a new perspective to tell something about Renaissance society