Forbidden apple and first transgression

Meaning

The first excess or transgression in II.4.2 is expressly associated with la pomme deffendue, the forbidden apple. From it the author traces humanity’s course towards bodily and spiritual ruin, arguing that participation in sensual pleasures entails participation in punishment and that a divine remedy is needed. His financial metaphor of defaulting on obligations extends the damage to love of God, family duty and charity; the apple is not merely an isolated emblem of forbidden knowledge.

Sonnet VIII gives this inherited conflict a concentrated poetic form. Foul defilements, souillemens ords, invite soul and body towards vice, while envious death assails them. In “il pourvoit & obvie,” God is the subject: he provides for and forestalls the ills of soul and body. The two purifiers answer these linked afflictions without making soul and body identical recipients or their restorations interchangeable. “Apple” and “foul” preserve the supplied French’s particular wording, rather than substituting generic fruit or the modern sense of order for ords.