Don Quixote & Dante

In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote, among other themes we are provided with the theme of love. In Alighieri’s Inferno, we see the misuse of love lead to the consequences of the second realm of Hell where those whose reason was ruled by their appetite are damned for eternity, “And this, I learned, was the never ending flight of those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty/who betrayed reason to their appetite” (37-39). Here we see the pairing of Francesca and Paolo, two lovers whose lust for one another while alive doomed them to Hell. Francesca in legend was a daughter of Guido da Polenta of Ravenna. Her father arranged a political marriage for her to Giovanni Malatesta of Rimini, but Francesca and Giovanni’s younger brother fell in love and carried on an affair despite both of them being married. For their inability to control their lust and appetite for one another, they are doomed to this level of Hell for misuse of love.

However, this level of Hell is the level of the sins of incontinence, the least punished levels of Hell which include carnal sin, gluttony, spendthrifts and misers and other incontinents. Certainly, it is one of the least horrific circles of Hell, even though its inhabitants are guilty of carnal sin but because carnal sin is most associated with love and therefore is less punishable than other offenses punishment is lightest for carnal sinners

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as the traitors in the worst levels of its damnation. This is also why Francesca tells Dante that Caina waits for Giovanni in the first ring of the last circle of Hell, where those who sin against their kin are damned for eternity, her one pleasing thought: “Love, which in gentlest hearts will soonest bloom/seized my lover with passion for that sweet body/from which I was torn unshriven to my doom./Love, which permits no loved one not to love,/took me so strongly with delight in him/that we are as one in Hell, as we were above./Love led us to one death. In the depths of Hell/Caina waits for him who took our lives” (Alighieri 97-104). Sweet thoughts also lead Don Quixote to misuse love because he expects to find the realm of romance and chivalry in his romantic novels of knighthood in reality. His obsession with these kinds of tales lead him into insanity, a world wherein his own punishment comes from his illusions and unrealistic expectations of the world including love. Dulcinea is the repository of all of Don Quixote’s ideals of love and chivalry. When he decides to undertake his exploits as a knight, he must choose a name, find suitable armor, ride a sturdy steed and have a lady who is his reason for being, his motivatio
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Approximate Word count = 1664
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)