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Francesca and Paolo
Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta are punished together in hell for their adultery.
Francesca was married to Paolo's brother, Gianciotto ("Crippled John") Malatesta
Francesca's shade tells Dante that her husband (still alive at the time Alighieri is writing the Canto, in 1304) is destined for punishment in "Caina", the infernal realm of familial betrayal named after Cain, who killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4:8) -- for murdering her and Paolo.
Francesca was the aunt of Guido Novello da Polenta, Dante's host in Ravenna during the last years of the poet's life (1318-21).
Francesca was married (c. 1275) for political reasons to Gianciotto of the powerful Malatesta family, rulers of Rimini.
Dante may have actually met Paolo Malatesta, conte di Ghiaggiuolo, in Florence (where Paolo was capitano del popolo--a political role assigned to citizens of other cities--in 1282), not long before he and Francesca were killed by Gianciotto.
Although no version of Francesca's story is known to exist before Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio--a generation or two after Dante, in 1372 --provides a historical account of the events behind Francesca's presentation that would not be out of place among the sensational novellas of his prose masterpiece, il "Decameron, ossia il Principe Galeotto"
Even if there is more fiction than fact in Boccaccio's account, it certainly helps explain Dante-character's emotional response to Francesca's story by presenting her in a sympathetic light.
Francesca, according to Boccaccio, was blatantly tricked into
marrying Gianciotto Malatesta, who was disfigured and uncouth, when the handsome and elegant Paolo was sent as "Procuratore" in his brother's place to settle the nuptial contract.
Angered at finding herself wed the following day to Gianciotto Malatesta, Francesca makes no attempt to restrain her affections for Paolo and the two in fact soon became lovers.
Informed of this liaison, Gianciotto one day catches them together in Francesca's bedroom (unaware that Paolo got stuck in his attempt to escape down a ladder, she let Gianciotto in the room).
When Gianciotto lunged at Paolo with a sword, Francesca stepped between the two men and was killed instead, much to the dismay of her husband, who then promptly finished off Paolo as well.
Francesca and Paolo, Boccaccio concludes, were buried--accompanied by many tears--in a single tomb.
Francesca's eloquent description of the power of love (Inf. 5.100-7), emphasized through the use of anaphora, bears much the same meaning and style as the love poetry once admired by Dante and of which he himself produced many fine examples.
Famous Lovers (Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen, Achilles, Paris, Tristan)
Physical beauty, romance, sex, and death--these are the pertinent elements in the stories of the lustful souls identified from among the "more than a thousand" such figures pointed out to Dante by Virgil (Inf. 5.52-69).
Semiramis was a powerful Assyrian Queen alleged--by the Christian historian Orosius--to have been so perverse that she made even the vice of incest a legal practice. She was said to have been killed by an illegitimate son. Dido, Queen of Carthage and widow of Sychaeus, killed herself after her lover, Aeneas, abandoned her to continue his mission to establish a new civilization in Italy (Aeneid 4). Cleopatra, the beautiful Queen of Egypt, took her own life to avoid capture by Octavian (the future emperor Augustus); Octavian had defeated Mark Antony, who was Cleopatra's lover (she had previously been the lover of Julius Caesar). Helen, wife of Menalaus (King of Sparta) was said to be the cause of the Trojan war: acclaimed as the most beautiful mortal woman, she was abducted by Paris and brought to Troy as his mistress. The "great Achilles" was the most formidable Greek hero in the war against the Trojans. He was killed by Paris, according to medieval accounts (Dante did not know Homer's version), after being tricked into entering the temple of Apollo to meet the Trojan princess Polyxena. Tristan, nephew of King Mark of Cornwall, and Iseult (Mark's fiancée) became lovers after they mistakenly drank the magic potion intended for Mark and Iseult. Mark shoots Tristan with a poisoned arrow, according to one version of the story popular in Dante's day, and the wounded man then clenches his lover so tightly that they die in one another's arms.
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Lancelot (Guinevere and Gallehaut)
The story of Lancelot and Guinevere
Francesca identifies as the catalyst
for her affair with Paolo (Inf. 5.127-38).
This was a romance popular both in poetry (by Chrétien de Troyes) and in a prose version known as Lancelot of the Lake.
According to this prose text, it
is Queen Guinevere, wife of King Arthur,
who kisses Lancelot, the most valiant of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.
Francesca, by giving the romantic initiative to Paolo, reverses the roles from the story.
To her mind, the entire book recounting this famous love affair performs a role similar to that of the character Galeotto, a friend of Lancelot who helps bring about the adulterous relationship between the queen and her husband's favorite knight.
"Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia" (5.4)
Minos stands there, horrifyingly, and growls
"Galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse: / quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante" (5.137-8)
a Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it: / that day we read no more of it
Study Questions
What is the logical relationship between the vice of lust and its punishment in Dante's hell?
Why is Dante moved to tears after Francesca's description of love (5.100-7)
Why does he finally fall "as a dead body falls" after her personal account of her intimate relationship with Paolo (5.127-38)?
The episode of Francesca and Paolo, the first in which Dante encounters someone punished in hell for their sins, presents a challenge.
Dante-character is overcome by compassion for the lovers even as Dante-poet has damned them to hell in the first place.
What are possible consequences of this apparent gap
between the perspectives of the character and the
poet who are both "Dante"?
From Dante's presentation of Francesca and Paolo,
we are encouraged to consider the place of moral
responsibility in depictions of love, sex, and violence in our own day.
We can certainly discuss music, television, movies, and advertising (as well as literature) in these terms.
Who is more (or less) responsible
and therefore accountable for
unacceptable attitudes and behaviour in society:
the creators and vehicles of such messages or the consumers and audiences?
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