Friday, January 21, 2011

Bewailing thir excess

Christopher Ricks (Milton's Grand Style, p.74) makes the link between Adam and Eve 'bewailing thir excess' and lines from The Pardoner's Tale

O, wiste a man how manye maladyes
Folwen of excesse and of glotonyes

Think also here of the sins of incontinence that occupy the early circles of Dante's Inferno.