What was the title of C.S. Lewis’s first published scholarly book?

C.S. Lewis’s first published scholarly book was The Allegory of Love.

Published in 1936, the book examines medieval and Renaissance conceptions of courtly love. Its subtitle, A Study in Medieval Tradition, identifies the historical scope of the work. Lewis argues that literary treatments of love changed significantly across the Middle Ages and traces those developments through major texts.

The book helped establish Lewis as a serious literary scholar before he became widely known for Christian apologetics and children’s fiction. Its success also contributed to his academic reputation at Oxford, where he taught English literature.

The Allegory of Love is not a novel and is not one of Lewis’s devotional books. Later scholarly works included English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, published in 1954, and The Discarded Image, published in 1964. Lewis also wrote A Preface to Paradise Lost, a critical study published in 1942.