Which medieval allegory did C.S. Lewis write a scholarly study of in 1936?

The Allegory of Love is the medieval-literature study C.S. Lewis published in 1936. Its full title is The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, and it examines allegorical and courtly-love writing from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The book was one of Lewis's major scholarly achievements. He traces changing ideas about love through writers and texts including Ovid, Andreas Capellanus, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, and Edmund Spenser. Lewis argues that medieval literature developed distinctive conventions for representing love, desire, and moral conflict.

Its publication helped establish Lewis's reputation as a serious literary historian before his most famous popular works appeared. He later became especially known for Christian apologetics and children's fantasy, but medieval and Renaissance literature remained the foundation of his academic career.

The title can cause confusion because it sounds like a study of one single poem. It is instead a broad historical investigation of a literary tradition. Lewis's scholarship on allegory also informed his broader interest in symbolism, myth, and the relationship between imaginative stories and moral ideas.