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What A Dream Was Here: An Ontological Approach To Love And Magic In Shakespeare’S A Midsummer Night’S Dream, Brittany May Rebarchik

Theses and Dissertations

This paper takes Heidegger’s notion of world disclosure and uses it for extended thematic analyses of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In contrast to the majority of Shakespeare critics who treat Shakespeare’s use of magic as an epistemological issue, I argue that the main action of the play develops through an inherent contradiction between the magical and non-magical ontological states of the characters and the love that results. Borrowing from German philosopher Martin Heidegger, I demonstrate magic’s role as a catalyst in giving certain kinds of love a “shift of existence.” I show that the characters come more fully into being, …