THE ALLEGORY OF LOVE

A STUDY IN MEDIEVAL TRADITION

C. S. LEWIS

Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere, cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore

An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

“The Allegory of Love” originally appeared in the print book The Allegory of Love, published in hardcover by Cambridge University Press in 1961. The text in this edition is taken from the 2012 paperback edition published by Canto.

the allegory of love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. Copyright © 1961 by Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

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first edition

ISBN 978-0-06-231375-1

TO

OWEN BARFIELD

Wisest and best

of my

unofficial

teachers

CONTENTS

i courtly love

ii allegory

iii the romance of the rose

iv chaucer

v gower. thomas usk

vi allegory as the dominant form

vii the faerie queene

Appendix I

Appendix II

PREFACE

It is to be hoped that the purpose of this book is sufficiently explained in the text, and the preface need therefore be occupied with nothing but thanks where thanks, so far as I can recall, are due. But I cannot promise to remember all my debts, and I am well aware, like the philosopher, that ‘if I had succeeded in owing more, I might then perhaps have gained more of a claim to be original’.

Of unambiguous debts my first is naturally to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and to the skilled and patient anonymities who serve them; then to Dom André Wilmart, O.S.B., for careful criticisms of the first two chapters; to Professor C. C. J. Webb for his helpful interest in the second; to the Medieval Society of Manchester University (and specially to Professor Vinaver) for their kind hearing and useful discussion of the third; to Dr. C. T. Onions for subjecting my attempts at Middle English verse to that best criticism in which all distinction between the literary and the linguistic is resolved; and to Dr. Abercrombie, for all that is not erroneous in the Appendix on Danger. The first chapter was read and commented upon by Mr. B. Macfarlane and Professor Tolkien so long ago that they have probably forgotten the labour, but I do not therefore forget the kindness.

Thus far my task is easy; but behind these unmistakable creditors I detect a far larger circle of those who have helped me, directly or indirectly, when neither they nor I supposed that any such matter was toward. There seems to be hardly any one among my acquaintance from whom I have not learned. The greatest of these ...