Lord of the Rings and the Inferno

With the Medieval Madness and Trebuchets and all, my mind has been on nothing else. This whole week, i dont know why, but my mind has been on Lord of the Rings. Especially with the third one with the huge trebuchets at the end of the movie. While i was writing my final paper, i was writing on Dante. And lately, i realized how similar the two are together. In Lord of the Rings, Sam and Frodo are like Dante as they travel through different places outside of the Shire. Also there is Golom who is like Virgil who guides them through these places which are like levels of hell towards Mordor. There are certain places in the Lord of the Rings which are like that in the Inferno like the lake of the dead and the orcs who are like the demons in hell. After thinking about the Inferno, it was almost as if The Lord of the Rings was a Medieval version of it. Anyhow, i think that there is something interesting to the two and that somehow they are both related.