What subject did C.S. Lewis teach as a Cambridge professor?

C.S. Lewis taught medieval and Renaissance literature as a Cambridge professor. In 1954, he became the first holder of the newly established chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

The appointment followed nearly three decades at Oxford, where Lewis had taught English literature at Magdalen College. His Cambridge field matched his scholarly expertise: he studied the literature, language, religious imagination, and intellectual history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Lewis’s academic work was separate from, but connected to, his popular writing. Books such as The Allegory of Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century established his reputation as a literary historian. He continued writing fiction and Christian apologetics while holding the Cambridge chair, making him unusual as both a specialist scholar and a widely read author.