Which 1936 book by C.S. Lewis examines medieval ideas about courtly love?

The Allegory of Love is C.S. Lewis’s 1936 scholarly book examining medieval and Renaissance ideas about courtly love. It is a work of literary criticism rather than a novel or devotional book.

Lewis studies the development of allegorical and courtly traditions in European literature, with particular attention to writers and texts from the Middle Ages. The book helped establish his reputation as a serious literary scholar before his best-known popular works appeared.

Its title can be misleading because the book is not simply a general history of romantic relationships. Lewis investigates how literary conventions, philosophical assumptions, and religious ideas shaped representations of love in poetry and narrative.

The work belongs to the academic side of Lewis’s career, alongside later books such as English Literature in the Sixteenth Century and The Discarded Image. Readers sometimes confuse The Allegory of Love with his fictional treatment of love and myth in Till We Have Faces, published two decades later.