What do Dante and C. S. Lewis have in common?

It's pretty clear from his academic writings that C. S. Lewis was a big fan of Dante, in particular his Divine Comedy. "I think Dante's poetry, on the whole, the greatest of all the poetry I have read" (in an essay called "Dante's similes" from Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature). In this same essay, Lewis categorizes Dante's similes into four groups, with the most Homeric/Virgilian similes in group 1, and the most uniquely Dantesque similes in group 4. Group 3 is pretty solidly Dantesque. Lewis writes:

This intense realism [in Dante's poetry] naturally leads Dante into what is, perhaps, his favourite type of simile, of which I make my third class. It is rather remarkable that Homer and Virgil hardly ever compare an emotion with an emotion. They compare one material thing or action with anothermaterial thing or action - warrior with wolf or words with snowflakes. Or again, they compare an emotion with some external object, the invisible with the visible: a man's mind may bubble like a cauldron. But hardly ever do they say 'Achilles or Aeneas felt at this juncture as you or I, reader, might feel in this or that situation in ordinary life'. If I remember rightly there is only one place in Homer where the content of a simile is psychological [...]. Now it might be predicted that a man who was trying to do what Dante is trying to do, would find frequent occasion for the psychological simile: and in fact, one of the chief memories we bear away from a first reading of Dante is the wealth of passages beginning come colui in which he tries to make us realize something indirectly by telling us that the feeling it excited was like some feeling we know.

Perhaps the best example of this third class of similes is found (according to Lewis) toward the end of Paradiso, when Dante likens his emotions upon seeing the celestial rose to the emotions an ancient barbarian might have had when first seeing Rome, except that Dante's emotions are naturally more intense.

This brings me to the point. I received the set of The Chronicles of Narnia for Christmas and have been working my way through those books, in the chronological order (The Magician's Nephew first, and then The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, etc.). Toward the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was struck by a simile that I think falls into this third Dantesque class, and it is very effective. Lewis is describing Susan and Lucy's ride on Aslan's back as he races toward the witch's castle. I won't quote it at length here, but the simile goes on at length, describing the feeling Susan and Lucy had to the feeling you would have if you were racing through the countryside on a very fast and magnificent horse - except that riding Aslan is much more than riding a horse. There is a very direct realism to this simile (similar to Dante), and it is a simile comparing an emotion to an emotion (similar to Dante), and in my opinion Lewis uses it to very good effect - you feel like you really know what it feels like to ride on Aslan's back.

So, among other things, Lewis shares at least one simile in common with Dante, and it's a very good class 3 simile.

In other news, I finally finished reading the Divide Comedy late last night, after starting it three or four or five years ago!