What title did C.S. Lewis receive when he became a Cambridge professor in 1954?

In 1954, C.S. Lewis became the first holder of the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University.

The appointment marked Lewis’s move from Oxford to Cambridge after nearly three decades as an Oxford tutor. The chair was newly established, and its title reflected Lewis’s principal scholarly field: English literature from the medieval and Renaissance periods.

Lewis continued to teach and write at Cambridge while maintaining connections with Oxford literary circles. His scholarship included studies of medieval allegory, Renaissance poetry, literary criticism, and the history of English literature. He held the Cambridge chair until his death in 1963.

The title is sometimes shortened in biographies to “Medieval and Renaissance English,” but it is not the same as a chair of theology or Christian literature. Lewis wrote extensively about Christianity, yet his Cambridge professorship was an academic post in English literature.