Which 1936 study made C.S. Lewis a prominent literary scholar before his Christian apologetics?

The Allegory of Love made C.S. Lewis a prominent literary scholar before his best-known Christian apologetic books. Published in 1936, it examines allegorical and courtly love traditions in medieval and Renaissance literature.

Lewis traces changing ideas about love through writers including Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, and Edmund Spenser. The book’s scholarship helped establish his reputation in English literary studies before he became internationally famous as a Christian author.

His later academic works included A Preface to Paradise Lost and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. These studies show that Lewis’s career was not limited to theology or children’s fantasy: he remained deeply engaged with literary history, literary criticism, and the development of Western imaginative traditions.