The Story of Rimini
The work promotes compassion for all of humanity and the style served to contrast against the traditional 18th century poetic conventions.
The first mention of The Story of Rimini comes in Hunt's 1811 edition of The Feast of the Poets where he alludes to writing the poem.
[1] In October 1811, Hunt started reading various works to develop a theme for his poem and he fixated on the Paolo and Francesca episode in Canto V of Dante's Inferno.
To raise money to pay a 500-pound fine, he sold The Story of Rimini, The Descent of Liberty, and The Feast of the Poets to the publisher Gale, Curtis and Fenner for 450 pounds.
Instead, Murray proposed a limited release of the work with split profits with Hunt retaining the copyright.
[8] In March, the work brought Hunt 45 pounds, and he sought to have Murray buy the rest of the copyright.
[9] A close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a line from the poem, "very poetry of nature", II.47, is quoted in the 1818 edition of Frankenstein and cited as "Leigh Hunt's Rimini" in Volume 3, Chapter 1.
The poem begins with a description of an urban environment that focuses on the bustle of the crowd:[10] For on this sparkling day, Ravenna's pride, The daughter of their prince, becomes a bride, A bride, to crown the comfort of the land: And he, whose victories have obtained her hand, Has taken with the dawn, so flies report.
The deep talk heaves, the ready laugh ascends: Callings, and clapping doors, and curs unite.
A lofty spirit the former was, and proud, Little gallant, and had a sort of cloud Hanging for ever on his cold address Which he mistook for proper manliness.
(lines II:18–24) After the political marriage, Francesca travels to Rimini while describing how there is little ability to make free choices in life.
[12] Hunt chose the Paolo and Francesca episode from the Inferno to discuss problems relating to "setting authorized selfishness above the most natural impulses, and making guilt by mistaking innocence".
[19] Within the poem, Hunt attempted to follow the pattern of Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads by relying on common speech.
Previously, those like Samuel Johnson viewed the common language like that of barbarians and that it was poetry's job to protect society against vulgarity.
"[23] Nicholas Roe claimed that "Hunt reveals a keen observation of gestures, manners and motives: he could readily turn such details to satirical effect [...] but in his poem satirical disruption is smoothed into an attractively 'fluttering impatience' for what will follow [...] Hunt's master of townscape is highlighted by Wordsworth's repulsion from crowds".
[18] He later argued: "The Story of Rimini is structurally satisfying as a narrative, opening with the springtime pageant of Paulo's arrival at Ravenna and closing with a funeral cortege and an autumnal landscape" and that it is "an artful poem about artful behaviour, in which the malign intrigue of the two dukes is doubled and answered by the gentler dissimulation of the lovers—simultaneously transgressive and a discovery of truth.
