Milton in America: The case of Jackson County, Florida.

This essay traces the process of imaginative filiation by which John Milton, Governor of Florida during the American Civil War, came to be regarded as a descendant of John Milton the poet. The Florida Miltons trace a mode of fantasized association with the poet that parallels both Benedict Anderson's understanding of nationalism as an 'imagined political community' and Sigmund Freud's notion of individual development as elaborated through the 'family romance'. As a further irony, Peter Ackroyd's novel Milton in America offers a derogatory parallel to the same fantasy of filiation — a parallel that illustrates the pliable nature of literary history when subject to specific literary appropriations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]