Which C.S. Lewis book examines the history of allegorical love in medieval literature?

The Allegory of Love is C.S. Lewis’s 1936 study of allegorical treatments of love in medieval and Renaissance literature. Its subtitle is A Study in Medieval Tradition.

The book examines how writers represented love through allegory, especially in works connected with courtly and medieval literary traditions. Lewis discusses authors and texts including Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Edmund Spenser. The study helped establish his reputation as a major literary scholar before his most famous popular books appeared.

The title is often confused with The Four Loves, a later Christian discussion of different kinds of human affection. The Allegory of Love is primarily a work of literary history and criticism, not a personal guide to relationships. Lewis’s academic specialization in medieval and Renaissance literature also shaped his later teaching and his broader defense of older books.