Jenny Walicek writes about Spenser’s poem “Visions of the worlds vanitie” in Studies in Philology (Summer, 2008), claiming that “within each of the nine allegories Spenser has hidden two separate biographies of a pre-Fall emperor and a pre-Reformation pope.”
To summarize one striking example, the seventh stanza is about a wealthy elephant that parades around wearing a “gilden towre” until he is pained by “a little Ant, a silly worme”. The emperor referenced is Trajan, who looted 150 tons of gold from Dacia (as recorded on Trajan’s Column, or tower) and took Rome to its peak of wealth. While in Antioch sentencing his outspoken critic Ignatius (Bishop of Antioch) to death by lion, Trajan suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. The pope referenced in this allegory is Leo X, who actually owned a pet elephant that was paraded about wearing a tower, and who was the pope when Martin Luther nailed up his 95 theses and began the Reformation. Furthermore, Luther was condemned at the Diet of Worms.
Read the abstract on Ms. Walicek’s website.
Edmund Spenser Blog 