Troping the Uncouth Swain: Milton`s Use of Apostrophe in Lycidas

Abstract

Apostrophe is the most important poetic device in Milton’s Lycidas; oddly, there are no studies of the poem that focus exclusively on the apostrophe. This essay explores the centrality of apostrophe in Lycidas and makes two claims about its effect on the poem. One, apostrophe in Lycidas is an agent of recuperation, and, two, apostrophe renders the ostensible subject of the poem, Edward King/Lycidas, secondary to the poem’s primary subjects: poetry, the fear of losing poetic inspiration, and the vocation of the poet. My methodology originates in the scholarship of Jonathan Culler and Barbara Johnson, who have contributed important scholarship on apostrophic lyric poetry.