Francesca has long been a subject of fierce debate. By the mid-nineteenth century, she had been turned into an almost Byronic hero.

Maybe the truth of the matter is that she's bigger than her sin. Not in a "Romantic heroine" sort of way. Maybe she escapes the poet who gives her a voice.

Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as I explore Francesca's speech in Canto V of Dante's INFERNO. Maybe Francesca does the ultimate that a literary character can do: She pulls the curtain back to reveal her creator, standing there in all his ambivalence and unfulfilled desire.

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Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE :

[02:15] My English translation of INFERNO, Canto V, lines 88 - 142. If you want to see this translation, find a deeper study guide, or leave a comment about this episode to continue the conversation with me, find the entry for this episode on my website: markscarbrough.com.

[05:09] An admission: the case for Francesca is really the case against Dante-the-poet.

[06:32] Is she really a flatterer? She seems to know her fate.

[08:20] Is she a poet?

[10:40] Her hymn to love. Yes, it slips the definitions between lust and love. But she's only doing what Virgil and Dante have already done.

[12:05] Her sin is hardly the gravest sin. In fact, it's the closest sin to love itself.

[15:16] Francesca calls the poet on his game. She reveals that he still turns to classical literature, not theological literature, for the answers to the questions of human motivation.

[19:03] Francesca is a reader! She's the very person any poet wants.

[20:17] Paolo kissed her "trembling all over." It's an echo from Dante's reaction to Beatrice in the VITA NUOVA.

[21:31] Paolo does with Francesca what Dante never does with Beatrice. Does Dante wish he had?

[24:23] The passage ends with desire fulfilled. And the pilgrim faints--and maybe the poet, too.

[25:46] The scope of Canto V: from the sure judge Minos to Francesca's long passage of (perhaps) ambiguity and (perhaps) deep irony.