No history of the longstanding critical tradition of exploring the SpenserOvid relationship has been written. In this book Professor Stapleton constructs such a critical history the annotations of E. K. in The Shepheardes Calender 1579 the Enlightenment editions of The Faerie Queene the philological mode of the Spenser Variorum 193257 and the recent innovative work of Harry Berger and Colin Burrow. Aside from occasional articles no truly comprehensive analysis of their kinship as love poets exists either. The author explores Spensers emulation of Ovids amatory poetics. His humanist education trained him to find or construct analogues and etiological patterns in classical texts. Therefore his early study of translation intensive reading and versifying as an interrelated process guaranteed a densely allusive metamorphic Ovidian poetics as a natural result.