Milton's “Ad Patrem” and the Poetics of Virgilian Sons

Abstract

This article relocates John Milton's Latin poem to his father (“Ad Patrem”) in the contexts of the young Milton's literary self-fashioning and the changing patterns of early modern Virgil reception. Here and in his prose epistles, Milton establishes the persona of a scholarly, questing filial figure, grounded in a reading of book 6 of the “Aeneid” and its drama of fathers and sons. He makes a case for poetry and scholarship as shared practices. This article reflects on a new archival turn in Milton studies and, in turn, how Milton himself invites the reader to become a questing scholar.