The Apple that Fell from Aristotle's Hand: Fruits of Love and Death in the Libro de buen amor

This article examines the Archpriest of Hita's metaphor of love as a fragrant, decaying apple in light of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de pomo ('Book of the Apple or Death of Aristotle,' c. 1260), and in relation to the theological and mythographic connotations of fruto negro in the famous episode of Melón and Endrina, and in the Libro de buen amor as a whole. The narrator of the poem tempts readers with expressions of Ovidian "sweet love" of the flesh without concealing the malignant truth within, as he pursues the same fatal fruits that are warned against in the well-known Liber de pomo, with its apologetic revision of Aristotelian naturalism.