Ovid's Medea is my number one example. And, of course, the second book of Aristotle's Poetics (*g*).The time-travel story that matociquala and I wrote, "The Ile of Dogges," is completely and totally the wish-fulfillment fix for this grief.

The concern in the dream was less about literal lacunae and more with emotional distance, with indifference and neglect. Shakespeare was being lost because no one cared about him. A little like, come to think of it, Peter Carey's short story about cartographers, which I have forgotten the title of.