What subject did C.S. Lewis become professor of at Cambridge University in 1954?

In 1954, C.S. Lewis became professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University.

The appointment marked Lewis’s move from Oxford to Cambridge, where he held the newly established chair from 1954 until his death in 1963. His scholarly work had long focused on medieval and Renaissance texts, including the literature, religious ideas, and intellectual traditions of those periods.

Lewis had taught English at Oxford’s Magdalen College since 1925. His Cambridge position recognized a specialized field that connected his academic interests with his broader writing about myth, allegory, Christianity, and literary history.

The title is sometimes shortened to “English literature,” but that wording loses the specific historical focus of the chair. Lewis was not appointed as a professor of theology or creative writing; his Cambridge professorship concerned Medieval and Renaissance Literature.