Canto V Study Guide
Canto V (Circle 2: The Lustful/Carnal)
Those who were adulterous or used sex for personal gain.
Literary terms:
Similes: words compared to hurricanes, damned souls compared to birds
As the wings of wintering starlings bear them on/in their great wheeling flights, just so
the blast/wherries these evil souls through time foregone
As cranes go over sounding their harsh cry/leaving the long streak their flight in air/so
come these spirits, wailing as they fly
Symbolism:
Contrapasso: eternally blown about by a tempest (wind) “tempestuous” in life sinners are
swept away by their sexual passion so in death they are swept about. Murky
air=judgment clouded by passion, wind/tempest=lust; lightest punishment in Hell—Dante
felt sins committed in name of love were lesser sins (his sin)
Paolo and Francesca’s punishment: eternally locked together reminding each other of sin
but only shades of their former selves and unable to consummate their passion
Dante’s loss of consciousness (Dante swoon) overwhelmed by pity for sinners
Characters:
Dante: pilgrim, sympathetic to the sinners
Virgil: guide
Minos: mythological King of Crete, wise/just but angry;half man, half bull/product of
Zeus’ rape of Europa while he was disguised as a bull. Guardian/judge at this level.
Judges sinners by circling tail the number of the circle; beastly form=monstrosity of sin
Semiramis: empress who allowed her sexual desires to overcome her effect as ruler
Dido: promised to remain faithful to her husband after he dies but fell in love with
Aeneas who promised her he would leave his wife, when he abandoned her, she killed
herself. Dante does not punish her in the Wood of Suicides (showing sympathy for
suicide in the name of love?); in Book VI of The Aeneid, Aeneas visits his betrayed lover
in the Underworld.
Cleopatra: ruler who had many lovers
Helen: the face that launched a thousand ships, cause of the Trojan War, left Menelaus
for Paris starting the war
Achilles: married Greek who fell in love with Polyxena, a Trojan woman, betrayed his
county to marry her but was killed by Paris when he went to the Temple
Paris: Trojan seduced by Helen, took her to Troy starting the Trojan War
Tristan:
Paolo and Francesca: Francesca was married to Giovanni Malatesta, a deformed man.
She fell in love with her husband’s younger brother Paolo. Malatesta discovered Paolo
and Francesca together reading the rhyme of Lancelot and murdered both of them; their
story is chivalric love; they are reading a medieval romance; “stained the world
incarnadine” Did the lovers intend to sin or were they carried away by literature?
Conflicts:
Man vs. self: Dante’s sympathy for the sinners, loss of consciousness
Man vs. supernatural: Dante confronts Minos
Minos’ words to Dante: “Be careful”
Man vs. nature: sinners lost battle with their passion, the tempest
Man vs. man: Paolo and Francesca torment each other.