The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis

First published: 1936

Type of work: Literary criticism

Critical Evaluation:

In THE ALLEGORY OF LOVE, the subtitle, “A Study in Medieval Tradition,” suggests something more than literary history or criticism. As Lewis traces the development of the allegorical form historically to show how it was conditioned by the general climate of opinion in the Middle Ages, he reveals an underlying theme which is his main purpose. He states that the form and sentiment of the discussed poetry has left a clearly definable trace on our minds even though it has passed away. The allegorical love poem was an easy mode of expression and if we can understand the present and possibly the future then by using the imagination of history we can possibly succeed in recreating expression of the lost state of mind created by these old poems. The basic element distinguishing the medieval from the modern mind was its intuitive recognition of myth as the essence of literature. Imaginative apprehension of this concept is necessary for understanding the relationship between past, present, and future, according to Lewis, because the pattern of history, like all great stories, is a myth whose meaning is revealed only to the imagination.

The structural argument of the book has four main divisions: (1) an analysis of the medieval ideal of courtly love; (2) an explanation of the origins of allegory as a literary form; (3) a survey of the mutations of the allegorical form as it was used in love poems; (4) an analysis of the transmutation of both form and sentiment in THE FAERIE QUEENE In following this main outline, Lewis contributes to the study of medieval literature a useful synthesis of unfamiliar material and fresh assessment of the familiar. Attempting to revitalize medieval literature for the modern reader, he stresses that the Middle Ages, having more coherence than our own age, had also more vitality in the sense that art forms were derived directly from what was considered most significant in human life. The initial premise is that the form of allegorical love poetry is explicable only in terms of the tradition of courtly love.

Lewis distinguishes four main aspects of courtly love: Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love. The code of feudal society was obviously responsible for the first two features; the third developed more subtly from the practice of strategic rather than romantic marriage alliances and from the Church’s ambivalent attitude toward passion. The fourth feature had the most complex origin and the most significant bearing on love allegory. Lewis thinks that the idea of a “Religion of Love” cannot be attributed to a misunderstanding of Ovid’s mock-religious love poetry; for the medieval poets’ understanding of Ovid is revealed by the comparable flippancy of their own erotic poetry. Moreover, the original connection between Christianity with its worship of the Blessed Virgin, on the one hand, and the “Religion of Love,” on the other, was a matter not so much of influence as of reaction, with the love poetry based on parody of the religious doctrine. But what began as parody was transformed by the high seriousness of some poets into an imaginative escape from the severities of their faith.

The subtlety of this relationship is elaborated in detailed summaries of the love poetry of Chretien de Troyes and the love theory of Andreas Capellanus. In discussing Chretien, Lewis stresses the difference between his early EREC and his masterpiece, LAUNCELOT. The first is a brutal adventure tale of the Griselda story type, while the later poem is the epitome of the tradition of courtly love. Chretien transforms the element of adventure by expressing his hero’s religious emotion in terms of subjective adventure, through the medium of allegory. In contrast, Andreas Capellanus in his DE ARTE HONESTE AMANDI attempts to Christianize love theory by rational definition, illustrated by a delightful variety of dialogues and stories; but he recognizes the impossibility of reconciliation in a palinode which affirms that all his advice was given in order that the reader might understand but reject love. Lewis feels that his conclusion, like the similar closing passage of Chaucer’s TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, invalidates neither the love theory nor the religious doctrine, but subordinates the former to the latter as, in medieval thought, everything in the secular world is subordinated to eternity. Lewis stresses the fact that the relationship between the two systems, erotic and Christian, was one of infinite variation of a pattern which gave life the unity of art. This idea underlies the whole argument of the book. Life is most meaningful when it has the form of an art; and art, in turn, is most meaningful when it takes its form from life.

Lewis’ analysis of the history of the allegorical method is based on the premise that the nature of thought and language is fundamentally allegorical. His purpose is an inquiry into a quality inherent in human speech which becomes as well a part of the structure of poetry in the Middle Ages. The definition of the inquiry implies the conclusion: if allegory is fundamental to the human imagination, then its structural use in imaginative literature results in a synthesis of form and content which was naturally popular in an age which appreciated synthesis.

Allegory as a mode of expression began, according to Lewis, in classical Latin poetry with the use of personification, a literary device which originated in mythology and continued in rhetoric. He traces this development as a decline from genuine mythopoeia or myth-making in literature. Using the THEBAID of Statius as a key example, Lewis reveals a pattern of recurrent loss and recovery; as the Olympians declined into mere figures of rhetoric, the figures of rhetoric acquired increasing imaginative force. This literary trend resulted from a two-fold change in the thought of the Roman world, a change of which Christianity was a supreme manifestation rather than a cause. One aspect was the development of monotheism, which explained the gods of popular religion as facets of the supreme power; and the other was what Lewis defines as an increasing personal sense of divided will and a concomitant practice of introspection. He finds in St. Augustine’s CONFESSIONS a major example of the trend toward expressing this inner conflict in metaphorical terms, which he thinks explains both the origin and the continued popularity of allegory as a literary form.

The step from metaphorical expression of inner conflict to the structural use of allegory was first taken by Prudentius in his PSYCHOMACHIA, an inferior poem whose popularity proves to Lewis the eagerness of its readers for full-fledged allegory. The power of allegorical conflict in dealing with psychology was amply demonstrated by the successors of Prudentius. A more subtle power of allegory was gradually revealed by such diverse writers as Claudian, the bishop Ennodius, and the little-known Martianus Capella of Carthage, in whose varied works Lewis finds a common denominator: by means of allegory, the gods of mythology were preserved and the free creation or recreation of the marvelous was made possible. In ancient literature there were only two worlds, the normal world and the world of believed marvels. The use of no-longer-believed marvels as allegory provided the poet with a third world of the marvelous-known-to-be-fiction, a contribution which Lewis considers vital for the development of literature. This is the use of myth, the preservation of the marvelous once accepted as fact but capable of recovery and renewal in later periods. Such a revitalization is found in allegory. This application of loss and recovery, of myth transformed into mythology, foreshadows the history of allegory as a form. Lewis does not draw a parallel but rather reveals a different phase of the cycle: the history of medieval love allegory illustrates recovery and loss. A constant undercurrent of this argument is Lewis’ theory of history as the greatest of all myths.

Although an important contribution to allegorical love poetry was made by the French philosophical poets of the twelfth century, whose use of the allegorical form to express metaphysical and theological arguments elaborated the structure and increased the scope of allegory, the first genuine allegorical love poem was the ROMANCE OF THE ROSE, created by Guillaume de Lorris and ostensibly continued by Jean de Meun. Lewis’ detailed summary of the first part stresses the poet’s psychological realism and his technical achievements. The characters are all personifications of qualities of character: some belonging to the hero, some to the heroine, and some to both. The course of action in which they engage presents such a penetrating description of the experience of both parties in a complex love affair that Guillaume could be called the father of the sentimental novel. But in keeping the allegorical significance consistent, Guillaume does not sacrifice the consistency of the story at its literal level. In the second part the allegorical love story becomes distorted as the action is elaborated without any allegorical significance, or the allegory emphasized with ridiculous results in action; for Jean de Meun was interested in the love allegory merely as a framework for lengthy digressions on a variety of subjects. Both Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun make a major contribution to the development of love allegory: the former with his model of form and the latter with his encyclopedia of material for his successors.

The ROMANCE OF THE ROSE was, according to Lewis, not merely part of the background for Chaucer and Spenser but an influence on English literature second only to the Bible and Boethius from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. With the achievements of Chaucer, Gower, and Usk, which Lewis analyzes in detail, allegory became the dominant form. With its dominance Lewis also associates its decline, in two respects: its use and abuse by inferior writers and its metamorphosis by writers of genius. During the fifteenth century the allegorical form experienced both of these effects. In his discussion of the Chaucerians—Lydgate, Dunbar, Nevill, and Googe—Lewis illustrates the decline of allegory through its separation from the center of interest of the poem and its retention as conventional decoration. Since the dominant form is most likely to attract the inferior talent and even to disguise its inferiority, the main line of influence is likely to be a descending one. The ROMANCE OF THE ROSE is an example: the inferior second part was more influential than the first part, and the incidental elements of the first part were more influential than its essence. But the dominant form may also conceal its own metamorphosis. While the love allegory was declining, the older moral or theological allegory was given fresh impetus by the attempt to retaliate against the erotic theme. In the allegories of Gavin Douglas the homiletic and erotic strands become perfectly fused and subordinated to the imaginative appeal of pure fantasy. Thus, the decline of love allegory, the loss of its original mythopoetic impulse, led ultimately to a recovery.

Lewis’ analysis of the relationship of THE FAERIE QUEENE to this tradition reveals a complete metamorphosis. Spenser’s basic form is that of the Italian romantic epic, adapted for allegorical purposes: and his treatment of love supplants the courtly tradition with the ideal of romantic marriage. Beneath the surface of the romantic epic’s series of fantastic adventures are several levels of allegory. The level first apparent is not so much allegory as symbol: the knight, the lady, the dragon’s mouth are not imaginary expressions of facts in the natural world but real facts which express the supernatural world. The next level is what makes THE FAERIE QUEENE the touchstone for Lewis’ theory of mythopoeia: “the world of popular imagination: almost, a popular mythology [in] the primitive or instinctive mind.” Two further levels of meaning are dismissed by Lewis as confusing to genuine criticism: the political allegory he considers an unfortunate attempt to attract Spenser’s contemporaries, and the allegory of Arthur and Gloriana he considers inexplicable in its fragmentary state. He devotes major attention to the moral or philosophical allegory, which in turn operates on several planes. Each book has an allegorical core developed by characters and events, other events that are miniature independent allegories, and some that are pure fantasy. In distinguishing between these planes, Lewis emphasizes the imaginative unity within the allegorical diversity of the poem. The conclusion about THE FAERIE QUEENE is two-fold: its greatness depends primarily on its likeness to life, and its historical significance as the apotheosis and the metamorphosis of the allegorical form. Its influence continues the pattern since it inspired the Romantics not as allegory but as fantasy: what is recovered is never precisely what was lost. In contrast, Spenser’s transformation of the concept of love had an influence so direct that romantic marriage became a patitude in English literature.

Throughout his discussion of love allegory, Lewis’ emphasis on the artistic subtlety and imaginative appeal of medieval literature leads to some provocative judgments. In analyzing an inferior talent like that of Jean de Meun, Lewis condemns the quality that many medievalists would condone, lack of unity; and he praises a quality not associated with the Middle Ages, power in describing natural beauty. The analysis which reveals Lewis’ critical emphasis most clearly is that of Chaucer, whom he discusses as a poet of courtly love rather than as the eventual creator of THE CANTERBURY TALES. Not only did Chaucer’s contemporaries think of him as a love poet, but the major tradition of English poetry descended from the love poetry rather than from the TALES. Lewis presents Chaucer’s main love poems, THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESSE, THE PARLEMENT OF FOULES, and THE BOOK OF TROILUS, as examples of the varied influence of the ROMANCE OF THE ROSE. The first has the elements of dream vision, garden setting, and courtly love theme, but no allegory. The PARLEMENT has similar framework devices with personifications which suggest specific topical allegory but in fact celebrate the general conceit of courtly love. In TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, Chaucer has translated the psychological intricacies of the ROMANCE OF THE ROSE from allegory into literal story, and has transformed Boccaccio’s Renaissance story into a medieval poem. Not only do the events conform to courtly love traditions, but the style is uniformly medieval, with rhetorical ornamentation and metaphysical digressions which give the heightened impact of unity in diversity. The ideal of courtly love makes the story theoretically consistent as well as psychologically sound, affording that unity which satisfies a basic need of the imagination. Lewis claims that unity of interest is neither classical nor foreign to any form of art. When the medieval work lacked such unity, the reason was not the fact that it belonged to the Middle Ages but that it failed as a work of art, possibly because the writer worked on a design too vast for his resources and ability. As Lewis points out, the artist succeeded best when he worked on a modest scale, as in the case of SIR GAWAINE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT or in parish churches of Norman French design, or when his resources were equal to his plan, as in the DIVINE COMEDY or in Salisburg Cathedral, where design and detail are in proper proportion.

Lewis’ two themes, the development of medieval love allegory and the understanding of ourselves are united in his conclusion that great literature moves to its own rhythm, neither slowed nor hurried by literature that exists on a lower level. Thus, Spenser’s true position is now apparent, centuries after his own time, as the mediator between medieval and modern poetry: too complete a Renaissance might have proved a catastrophe for art. Lewis has achieved his purpose in THE ALLEGORY OF LOVE if the reviewer was right who said that it is impossible to read this book without viewing all literature in a new and different light.