Two Journeys to the Afterlife: The Epistle of Forgiveness and the Divine Comedy

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts Dante Alighieri' s Divine Comedy with Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma'arri's Epistle of Forgiveness. The paper investigates the similarities and differences in terms of construction, methodology, narration, description, motivation, and characterization. By raising such an issue, this paper hopes to spot the light on the relationship between the east and the west. This paper demonstrates a lot about the impact of Islamic ideology on Christian Europe. The issue of the Arab-Islamic sources of the Divine Comedy is at the heart of this paper's argument that has now been going on for two centuries.