Dante confines adulterers to the second circle of hell. One of the adulterers, Francesca, argues that she and her husband's brother fell into an affair while reading about Launcelot and Guinevere. It sounds all very sermony and plausible--until one realizes that Dante isn't excusing the lovers. He has punished them.
And the fact is, Francesca is whinging.
If one is looking for a non-slimy role model, Launcelot would not be it. As I write in Modred versus Launcelot:
Launcelot is such a great guy to hate. Launcelot is the quintessential spoiled kid who goes off to college or prep school or wherever and gets into trouble with some other spoiled kids. He may even be the ringleader, but it will never be clear; he will never own responsibility. And then they all get into trouble, and the other kids may even get expelled, but Launcelot goes and cries and says how SORRY he is and how he never meant it to get out of hand and isn't it too awful and it wouldn't have gone so badly if it hadn't been for that other guy (who told on them).
Dante was not blind to fundamental human nature. Passion and affection are not evil. As C.S. Lewis stated: Joy and affection and pleasure are the aspects that God adds to an affair. By the time the act occurs, the sin is long past.
It is the self-justifications and blame-the-poetry arguments that keep Francesca's character in the second circle's rats-on-a-wheel windstorm. And yet Dante finds her actions less hopelessly damning than later sins since they at least look outward.
Dante was a student of human nature par excellence.
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