The larger frame of the story thus comprises as major lesson on love as a magical and healing power. Dante's Divine Comedy is an extremely ambitious and impressive work, and one of the greatest writings inspired by the Christian religion. Needless to say, love is essential to Christianity and it is preached in all its different forms. Dante's poem with its effusion of imagination and symbols, as well as through its morally compelling content is similar to the Arabian Nights in that it can be classified as a monument of ingenuity. The structure of Dante's Divine Comedy with its three main divisions and its one hundred cantos is very symbolic. Thus, not accidentally, Dante and his guide Virgil travel progressively from the outward circles to the lowest circles of the Inferno. Dante's journey is a pilgrimage that initiates him into the greatest mysteries of creation and of God and reveals to him the eternal moral truth. In his journey through Hell, Dante is first confronted with the greatest sins and transgressions of humanity against moral law. As such, he first Dante's encounter with Lucifer is placed at the very end of his journey through Hell as it symbolizes the ultimate confrontation with sin and untruth. For the pilgrim, this is yet another step that initiates him into moral truth and the greatest divine mysteries of the universe.

Moreover, Satan's punishment is the worst of all the sinners in Hell. Trapped at the very center of the universe, Satan is doomed to stay in absolute immobility on the lake frozen by his very wings. He represents the very root of evil, and therefore his punishment is the greatest of all the sinners. Thus, Lucifer is conquered, a prisoner because he is guilty of the greatest transgression: blindness to the absolute truth. Satan is depicted as immobile and dumb, a state which...

After going through all the circles of the Inferno, Dante proceeds to the Purgatory where he sees those who await redemption for their sins. Thus, Dante and his symbolic companion Virgil, pass from Hell to the Purgatory and then finally to Paradise, thus significantly traversing eternity and encountering all the three states of the human soul: the state of moral debasement and even of utter sin found in Hell, the beginning of moral purging in the Purgatory and finally a sublime state of moral purity found in Paradise. Not accidentally, Dante's companion through Paradise is no longer Virgil, who would not be admitted there because he is pagan, but Beatrice the symbol of love and moral purity. In Dante's vision therefore, love and moral virtue are closely linked. Furthermore, the Comedy ends with one of the most beautiful and famous lines of all times. These last lines reinforce the absolute and sublime power of love, which 'moves the sun and the other stars': "To the high fantasy here power failed; but now my desire and my will were revolved, like a wheel which is moved evenly, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars."(Dante, 157) Love is thus identified with the very principle of creation, the prime mover of the universe. It is the greatest force in the universe and the greatest attribute of the divinity. As such, Eden is a blessed place in which love is cherished as the highest ethical value.
Thus, the two major literary texts represent virtue as being closely linked with the force of love, as the most important moral value for man.

Works Cited

Arabian Nights Entertainments transl. By Richard Burton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Aligheri, Dante. The Divine Comedy ed. By Charles Eliot Norton. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1955.