What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s first major scholarly book on medieval literature?

The Allegory of Love was C.S. Lewis’s first major scholarly book on medieval literature.

Published in 1936, The Allegory of Love examines the development of allegorical and courtly-love traditions from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Lewis discusses writers and texts including Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, and Edmund Spenser.

The book established Lewis as a major literary scholar before he became especially famous for Christian apologetics and children’s fantasy. Its subtitle, A Study in Medieval Tradition, identifies the work’s central historical and literary focus.

A Preface to Paradise Lost and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century are later scholarly books by Lewis. The Discarded Image, published in 1964, also explores medieval and Renaissance thought, but The Allegory of Love came first among these works.