Of Stories and Women

Abstract

in its reader, seducing her away from her virtuous needlework. A Gallehaut, that book, and he who wrote it, too: one of the most famous pairs of lovers in Western literature, Paolo and Francesca of Dante's Inferno, bear witness to love being a literary emotion, since they fall in love because they read a love story, and not vice-versa. Reading of Lancelot and Queen Guinevere's adulterous love affair, they act out the story in real life, kiss when the characters kiss, and end up in Hell's second circle after being murdered by Francesca's husband. From this canonical model, then, we can infer two hypotheses on the relationship that exists between narration and seduction. One is a moral statement on love, consistent with etymology: to seduce is, etymologically, to lead astray, to mislead. The idea of seduction carries an element of deceit, and it is no wonder that Paolo and Francesca's reading is really a misreading: had they read the story to its end, they would have seen that it was written as a warning against the dangers of love; but they stop at the kiss-that day we read no more (V, 1. 137). The second lesson we can draw from their story is that seduction requires the mediation of images. Without the Lancelot story, love would not have declared itself: desire is aroused by an act of imagination. Acknowledging the power of literature, Dante faints; not so Boccaccio, who proudly picks up Francesca's insulting condemnation as a nickname for his own book: Here begins the book called Decameron, he writes, otherwise known as Prince Galahalt. Like the legendary go-between who facilitated Lancelot and Guinevere's love affair, the book will serve, in its turn, as a tool for seduction, spreading among its fair readers the dangerous contagion of love.