Metaphors In the Faerie Queene

There are a lot more metaphors in Faerie Queene than you might think. First of all, there's Morpheus. Morpheus is a god of sleep, which is strange when you consider that the writer of the book and most of the characters in the tale are Christian. So, why include Morpheus? Well, it was probably just a metaphor, or an easter egg in the tale meant to be humorous. When the sprites were trying to wake up Morpheus, it took quite a bit to wake him up. The slapped him and shook him and did quite a bit before he even stirred.

The book has several more gods, so this brings me to another question: Why did the author even include minor gods in the first place if the tale is a Christian tale? Well, it was most likely just to give an easy comparison to certain events or emotions happening at the time. Morpheus could have simply been a metaphor for the evil in laziness, and all the other sentences, like "Ares took control over him" would have meant in this case that the dude was just really mad, or wanted a fight, seeing as Ares is the Greek god of war. It also could have been for Pagan audiences, to make them more open to the story.