Certamen, interpretation, and Ovidian narration in The Faerie Queene III.ix-xii

Considering the "vile Enchaunter" Busirane as an Ovidian author, and using his tapestries as a point of reference, this paper probes the dynamics of Ovidian discourse in The Faerie Queene III. Cantos ix-xii form a discrete narrative unit within the larger book, and, in these cantos, we find three distinct Ovidian voices: those of Paridell, Busirane, and the narrator. These voices - which compete both against one another and their literary precedents for hermeneutic supremacy - contribute to the poem's tangible Ovidian spirit. Using Ovid's character-author and textual critic Arachne as a model for all later interpreters of Ovidian text, this paper investigates the idea that interpretation necessarily relies upon certamen. A consideration of Paridell's and Busirane's literal responses to and reproductions of mythological caelestia crimina helps to elucidate not only how Ovidian irony works in Book III's narrative polyphony, but also how the ostensibly discordant Ovidian voices in Cantos ix-xii cumulatively contribute to Book III's metaliterary self-consciousness.