‘Veramente li teologi questo senso prendono altrimenti che li poeti.’ DANTE In the last chapter we traced the growth of the sentiment of courtly love down to a point at which that sentiment was already beginning to express itself by means of allegory. It now remains to consider independently the history of the allegorical method, and for this purpose we must return to classical antiquity. In our new inquiry, however, there is no question of finding and no possibility of imagining,