The following is part four of a four-part series taken from a speech delivered by Michael Knowles at the National Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Conference.
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So let’s go back down to Francesca for a final point on language. Francesca attempts to translate the story of Lancelot and Guinevere into her own life. She makes an interpretive error: She confuses her own life with the life of the characters in the text, which leads to her death and damnation. And this terrifies Dante.
The canto ends with Dante falling “like a dead body falls.” Why? Because Francesca quotes Dante’s own style of poetry back to him. She alludes to a poem by Guido Guinizelli, the founder of Dante’s sweet new style of poetry. And Dante fears that he might have played a role in her damnation.
Which is why the canto is, if not political, at least politics-adjacent. Because it reminds us…
