Francesca and the Others

This chapter discusses the most famous episode of medieval reading—the moment in which Francesca da Rimini and her lover Paolo simultaneously kiss and fall into perdition while reading the story of Lancelot in Inferno 5, which has long been at the centre of my research. Here I investigate further aspects of this rich episode of reading, such as the connection to the visual (for instance, to illuminations of the scene of the kiss in the Lancelot) and the highly nuanced ways in which Dante has Francesca using literary texts in her speech. Next, I explore the ways in which ‘reading together’ has performative effects in medieval courtly literature, and then I contextualize Francesca’s reading within a genealogy of unconventional women readers: Heloise and Alyson of Bath, Mary and Flamenca, bringing to light the force of their heterodox, bodily, and creative ways of reading ‘as a woman’.