Which Oxford professor wrote the 1936 book The Allegory of Love?

C.S. Lewis wrote The Allegory of Love, published in 1936.

The book is a major study of medieval and Renaissance literature, especially the tradition of courtly love and allegorical writing. Lewis examines how ideas about love developed in European literature and discusses authors including Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, and Edmund Spenser.

The work helped establish Lewis as a significant literary scholar before his best-known fiction appeared. It won the Hawthornden Prize in 1937, an award for imaginative literature, even though The Allegory of Love is a work of literary criticism.

The title can lead to confusion with Lewis’s later book The Four Loves, published in 1960. The earlier work is scholarly and historical, while The Four Loves is a more accessible examination of affection, friendship, erotic love, and charity. Both titles concern love but have different purposes and dates.