Middle Ages

This is a point I would press on anyone dealing with the Middle Ages, that the first essential is to read the relevant classics over and over: the key to everything—allegory, courtly love, etc.—is there. After that the two things to know really well are the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose. The student who has really digested these (I don’t claim to be such a person myself!) with good commentaries, and who also knows the Classics and the Bible (including the apocryphal New Testament) has the game in his hands and can defeat over and over again those who have simply burrowed in obscure parts of the actual middle ages.

- Letters of C. S. Lewis