ABSTRACT
When Spenser fIrst took up Ovid as a role-model in The Shepheardes Calender, it was primarily the embittered Ovid of the exile elegies, a fIgure whose melancholy and geographical marginalization could serve as a ready symbol for the new poet's political discontent and marginalization. Spenser could have no idea in 1579 that the following year would see his departure for Ireland, to live out the rest of his life, apart from brief visits to England, in what he would come to see as a kind of exile, despite pleas to Elizabeth to be recalled. When, in 1595, Spenser resumes the stance of the Ovidian exile in two largely autobiographical works, CCCHA and Amoretti and Epithalamion, the exile is real, but the self-presentation, informed by other currents in Ovid's exile poetry, is marked by a new confIdence in the power of his position as a recognized national poet, balancing the continuing tone of disappointment with the centres of political power.
