Commentary Par V 16-17

It is as though Dante were playing with the conventions of his art.  This self-conscious introduction, naming the intermediate unit of division (between cantica and verse) of the poem (canto -- see Baranski [Bara.1995.3] for an appropriately theoretical consideration of this term) for the first time since [Inf XX 2] and [Inf XXXIII 90], makes Beatrice, as it were, the 'author' of this canto (see De Fazio [Defa.1995.1], pp. 74-75), and then, while interrupting her speech (and thus depriving her of her 'record'), compares her to one who does not interrupt his or her speech.  Such playfulness will be found again in the last verse of the canto, once more deploying the word canto in a self-conscious way.