Abstract
I have argued that Dante applied a moral theory to the story that he told in Canto V. Francesca’s case was a clear instance of adultery; and adultery was a voluntary act of immoral love. On this ground, Dante, the author of the Divine Comedy, assigned the couple to Hell.
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Notes
On seeing-as, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, third edition (New York, 1958), section IIxi; and Peter Levine, Living Without Philosophy: On Narrative, Rhetoric, and Morality (Albany, N.Y: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 31–38.
Giovambattista Gelli, a sixteenth-century commentator, explains that in the “vocabolo nostro fiorentino particulore,” “‘perso’ propriamente significa un colore azzurro, ma oscu-rissimo e buio.” See Gelli’s Letture édite e inédite sopra la Commedia di Dante, quoted in Dante Delia Terza, “Inferno V Tradition and Exegesis,” Dante Studies, vol. 99 (1981), p. 51.
Thomas Goddard Bergin, “Lectura Dantis: Inferno V,” in Ledum Dantis, vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1987), p. 17.
De Sanctis, “Francesca da Rimini secondo i critici e secondo l’arte” (1869), in Joseph Rossi and Alfred Galpin, eds., trans., De Sanctis on Dante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), p. 45.
Etienne Gilson, Dante the Philosopher, trans. David Moore (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1949), p. 304.
His son introduced him as “phylosofo poeta Dante Alighieri.” See Jacopo Alighieri, “Proemio di Jacopo Alighieri al suo comento sopra la Commedia di Dante suo Padre,” in Catherine Mary Phillimore, ed., Dante at Pavenna: A Study (London: E. Stock, 1898), p. 171.
Keats to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817, in Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats, 1814–1821 (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1958), vol. I, p. 185.
See Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular World, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), especially pp. 54–59.
The biological link between emotion and cognition supports a generally Aristotelian theory of the emotions. See, for example, Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt, “How (and Where) Does Moral Judgment Work?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 6, no. 12 (2002), pp. 517–523
Steven W. Anderson, Antoine Bechara, Hanna Damasio, Daniel Tranel, and Antonio R. Damasio, “Impairment of Social and Moral Behavior Related to Early Damage in Human Prefrontal Cortex,” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 2, no. 11 (November 1999), pp. 1032–1037.
Margaret Urban Walker provides an excellent list of influential recent statements in favor of partiality: Walker, “Partial Consideration,” Ethics, vol. 101, no. 4 (July 1991), p. 758
See Susan Wolf, “Morality and Partiality,” Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 6, (1992), pp. 243–259.
For connections among partiality, emotion, and narrative, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 1995), pp. 53–60
D.H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and Fiction: 1150–1220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 8.
Sidney, An Apology for Poetry or the Defense of Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London: T. Nelson, 1965), p. 52.
See, for example, Peter McCormick, “Moral Knowledge and Fiction,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 41, no. 4 (Summer 1983), pp. 399–410.
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© 2009 Peter Levine
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Levine, P. (2009). Poetry and the Emotions in Francesca’s Case. In: Reforming the Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104693_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104693_4
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