The Divine Comedy and the Heavenly Questions: Dante in Dialogue with Qu Yuan – A Preprint (Framework Version)

This study presents the first systematic comparison of Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), Italy's supreme poet, and Qu Yuan (340–278 BCE), China's first great poet. Despite belonging to radically different cultural traditions separated by over a millennium, these two poets share profound affinities that have never been explored in scholarly literature. Dante's Divine Comedy is a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise—a vision of the cosmos ordered by divine justice, shaped by personal exile and political hope. Qu Yuan's Li Sao (Encountering Sorrow) is a journey through heaven and earth—a shaman's flight, an exile's lament, a patriot's cry. Both poems are epics of the soul, written by men who knew the pain of banishment and the power of poetry to transcend it. Both poets were exiles. Dante was condemned to death in absentia, never to return to Florence. Qu Yuan drowned himself after years of political rejection. Both transformed personal tragedy into universal art. Both poets created mythic worlds. Dante's cosmos is Christian, hierarchical, moral. Qu Yuan's cosmos is shamanic, fluid, mythological. Yet both use journey as a structure, both populate their worlds with historical and legendary figures, both seek justice beyond this world. Both poets shaped their nations' languages. Dante wrote in vernacular Italian, creating a literary language for Italy. Qu Yuan wrote in a distinctive Chu dialect, shaping the Chinese poetic tradition for millennia. This study asks: What happens when we read these two poets together? What do they have to say to each other about exile, justice, love, and the divine? What can their differences teach us about the worlds they came from? Through close reading and philosophical reflection, this study traces the parallel ways in which Dante and Qu Yuan address these questions. It argues that despite vast cultural differences, both poets share a common concern with the tension between earthly injustice and cosmic order, personal suffering and poetic transcendence. The study is structured in six chapters, moving from biography to close reading to comparative analysis to philosophical dialogue. It is the first systematic comparison of Dante and Qu Yuan. If so, then this is a new exploration.