This dissertation seeks to expand the way we approach myth in Romantic literature, regarding it not just as classical content but as a process by which authors--including modern ones--are able to universalize and disseminate specific political, poetic, and religious agendas. Mythography is only one aspect of the broader category of mythopoesis, a category that allows us to consider how generic decisions, rhetorical maneuvers, and formal devices can also be used to lend authority and credibility to an author's underlying message. Scholars interested in Romantic uses of myth traditionally explore the religious subversiveness of the Second Generation's pagan subjects or myth's role as a means of reconciling the ideal past and flawed present. While these studies have greatly improved our understanding of the relationship between literary myths and historical concerns, they approach myth only in terms of mythographic content, thereby dismissing Romantic authors' active participation in the mythmaking process. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the foundational work of conservative rhetoric and mythmaking, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, but otherwise focuses on poetry composed between 1814 and 1822, the years leading up to and immediately following the Peterloo Massacre. Chapters in the dissertation explore conservative mythmaking, the responsibility Romantic poets assumed of using poetry for civic purposes, radical mythmaking leading up to Peterloo, and the growing intensity of myths produced in the massacre's aftermath.