Hunt, Byron, and Dante’s Paolo and Francesca

Beginning with the Paolo and Francesca episode from Dante’s Inferno , this chapter focuses on rewritings of the episode by Hunt in The Story of Rimini and by Byron in Don Juan and ‘Francesca of Rimini’. These rewritings provide insight into the erotics of shared reading and the subsequent uncertainty surrounding Francesca’s claim that, when she and Paolo settled down to read together, they did so ‘without suspicion’. Teasing out the ambiguities in Dante’s text, Hunt and Byron suggest that reading allows desire to be acknowledged in tacit ways that invite or evade self-awareness (or self-suspicion). Their interpretations of Francesca’s speech also offer reflections on their own poetic styles, with Hunt questioning the difference between naturalness and artfulness, and Byron questioning the sincerity of veiled self-disclosure.