“Quitting Nature’s Part”: The Reproductive Quest in Dryden’s Virgil

Abstract

John Dryden’s translations of Virgil’s Aeneid and Georgics engage with an early modern discourse of reproduction that encouraged maximizing production while warning against disorderly generativity. While Virgil and Dryden both had political reasons to be invested in patrilineage, their shared interest in Epicureanism, with its denial of life after death, may have driven these poets to search for an alternative form of immortality in reproduction. Dryden’s choices as a translator reveal cultural anxieties around women’s role in procreation and suggest a preference for adoption as a model for reproductive success because it allows women to be cut out of the process. Ultimately, Aeneas’ decision to identify with his deceased, adopted son rather than his living biological son in the poem’s final lines suggests a turning away from futurity and acceptance of death.