What was C.S. Lewis’s academic field at Cambridge University when he moved there in 1954?

C.S. Lewis became Cambridge University’s first professor of Medieval and Renaissance English in 1954.

After nearly three decades at Oxford, Lewis moved to Cambridge in 1954 to take the newly established chair. He was based at Magdalene College, Cambridge, whose name is spelled differently from Magdalen College, Oxford, where he had taught previously.

The appointment reflected Lewis’s expertise as a literary scholar. His academic work included studies of medieval allegory, Renaissance literature, literary history, and the development of English writing. His book The Allegory of Love had already established him as a major scholar before the Cambridge appointment.

Lewis continued writing popular religious and imaginative works after moving to Cambridge, but the professorship was a formal academic role in English literature rather than theology. That distinction helps separate his scholarly career from his better-known apologetic writing.