Comparison of Divine Comedy and Journey to the West

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At the very beginning of the Divine Comedy, Dante was lost in the wood and subsequently fell into a dream where he met Beatrice,whom Dante regarded as a marvelous companion on the pilgrimage. That is to say that Beatrice, as Christ for Dante, encouraged him to get out the entanglement of the forest when he was dying. Accordingly, “under the powerful compulsion of this love for Beatrice, Dante entered into a new apprenticeship, an apprenticeship in the art of poetry as the path to reach the truth about their love.” Their journey was to feel love, to serve God. However, in view of the fact that pilgrims are entitled to experience God without an interpreter, only if they had been forgiven of their sins. As a consequence, only through the experience of tribulation and suffering could the soul be enhanced, so that Dante finally saw God with the timeless creed that was received from Beatrice. During the trial and pilgrimage, Dante became aware of the nature of original sin, God-given salvation, and the significance of the pilgrimage. Also, Dante became aware of the care and love of God during the pilgrimage. Similarly, The Journey to the West, as a well-known work of fiction in the East, also depicts a legendary pilgrimage of the Tang Dynasty. This pilgrimage that started with the story that Buddha asked a Buddhist monk, Xuanzang, to obtain sacred texts in India and provided four disciples who could atone for their sins by helping the monk. As a monkey was one of the most famous disciples of the monk in the journey to the west, the novel has another name after The Monkey. With the helps of disciples, the monk reached the “Western Region” and obtained the sacred texts after eighty-one adventurous experiences. It is worth mentionin...

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.... “Shadowy Preface: an introduction to Paradiso.” In cambridge Companion to Dante, edited by Rachel Jacoff, 205-25 .Cambridge: Cambridge Up, 2007

Yu, Anthony C. “Two Literary Examples of Religious Pilgrimage: The "Commedia" and "The Journey to the West.” The University of Chicago Press Vol. 22, No. 3, 1983,

Wu Cheng’en, “introduction to the journey to the West” Foreign Languages Press; 1 edition 2003.

Mao Chengrui. “浅析《西游记》中猪八戒的形象” (an analysis of the image of pig in the Journey to the West) The literary education no.1 (2010)

SANDELANDS, LLOYD E. “The argument for God from organization studies” Journal of Management Inquiry; 2003

Lansing, Richard, ed. Dante Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000.

Beal, Rebecca S. “Salvation” 761-762

Mazzotta, Giuseppe.“Alighieri, Dante” 15-20

Michael Papio. “Pilgrimage” 701-703

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