What is the title of C.S. Lewis’s 1936 study of medieval courtly love?

C.S. Lewis’s 1936 study of medieval courtly love is The Allegory of Love. Its full title is The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition.

The book examines the development of allegorical and courtly-love literature from classical and medieval sources. Lewis discusses major writers and traditions, including Ovidian influence, the medieval allegorical imagination, and the poetry associated with courtly love.

The work helped establish Lewis’s scholarly reputation before his best-known popular fiction and apologetics. It was also significant because it presented medieval literature as intellectually serious rather than as a merely transitional period between classical antiquity and the Renaissance.

The title can be confused with Lewis’s later studies of particular authors. The Discarded Image, for example, examines the medieval and Renaissance model of the universe, while A Preface to Paradise Lost focuses on Milton’s epic. The Allegory of Love has a narrower literary and historical subject.