Allegory of Love

Rating:
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: A Critical Masterpiece (again)
Review: This is the book which made C.S. Lewis' reputation as a critic of medieval and renaissance literature. It was first published in 1936, and has been reprinted many times. Various reprintings have been listed separately by Amazon, and I have carried over this review from another listing, with a few expansions.

As originally written, "The Allegory of Love" covered the development of allegorical narrative from late classical times to Spenser's "Faerie Queene," with particular attention to the "Allegorical Love Poems of the Middle Ages" (the working title). Instead of following the prevailing fashion of dismissing allegory as "frigid" or "artificial," he examined why it was used, and how it functioned to portray abstractions like emotions or inner turmoil in dramatic terms. In doing so, he was paralleling developments in art history.

Unhappily for the book's long-term reputation, Lewis was persuaded to add to the planned text an earlier summary of modern theories of "courtly love" in medieval life and literature. Lewis himself noted that this theoretical construction did not quite fit the texts he analyzed in detail, and the whole approach is now regarded as at best problematic, and by many as simply wrong. Since Lewis presented the material with unusual clarity and wit, however, he has come to be treated as an authoritative source by some, and attacked as such by others.

The rest of the book, being based on original studies of primary sources, retains much of its value. Later textual studies and shifts in critical theory have only slightly diminished its value, and his discussions of such now-obscure writers as Martianus Capella remain among the most inviting of introductions. Lewis' treatment of "The Romance of the Rose" is still illuminating (and the point of departure for many recent re-considerations). His chapter on "The Faerie Queene" is regarded by some competent scholars as the foundation of modern study of the unfinished Elizabethan epic.

Although Lewis never looses sight of the entertainment value of many of the works he discusses (and some of them never had any), he is concerned to show that they addressed real problems of human behavior and emotions, and their presentation in narratives. Norman Cantor reports from first-hand experience that the book helped make the study of medieval romances respectable in academic circles. My own reading of the secondary literature brought me to a similar conclusion.

It is probably of interest to note that, according to Lewis himself, the "Chronicles of Narnia" did not arise from his studies of allegory, and that their allegorical implications arose spontaneously in his mind. One has to wonder whether he would have written "The Allegory of Love" differently after, rather than before, those experiences. Also, some of the medieval material which Lewis used in his theological science fiction novel, "Out of the Silent Planet," is discussed in its historical and literary context.

Serious students of English literature, and medieval literature in general, will find "The Allegory of Love" more than worth their time. So will those who simply enjoy reading Arthurian literature, and several other types of story. For many who are familiar only with Lewis the fantasist, or Lewis the Christian apologist, it will open new perspectives.