Using Ovid's Metamorphoses to teach Spenser's The Faerie Queene: A pedagogical approach to Book 3 100 views

The Faerie Queene is an intriguing addition to college classrooms, but also runs the risk of feeling like a Herculean task for students. One of the poem’s challenges is the amount of literature shaping the poem, which can create a wall between students and the poem. How can instructors introduce students to the important literary work of The Faerie Queene while staving off dislike and apathy brought on from student frustration? I argue that Ovid’s Metamorphoses offers a potential answer to this question for instructors teaching Book 3. Like the Metamorphoses, The Faerie Queene never rests, moving from one moment to the next, urging readers to keep up or get lost in “wandering woods.” The way in which the Metamorphoses inspires Spenser and informs The Faerie Queene has had a long and lively place in critical scholarship; however, the consideration of using this wealth of intertextual knowledge of Spenser in pedagogical practices seems overlooked. In teaching Book 3 intertextually with the Metamorphoses, instructors mediate the students’ experience of Spenser through Ovid, increasing the students’ ability to understand the complex poem, along with a corresponding increase in engagement. This paper attempts to join the conversation on teaching Spenser, offering a way to enhance the reading experience for students, while discussing a potential method for teaching Book 3 of The Faerie Queene in modern undergraduate classrooms.

MA (Master of Arts)

The Faerie Queene; teaching; Metamorphoses

English

2026-07-31