What was C.S. Lewis’s academic subject at Cambridge University from 1954?

From 1954, C.S. Lewis held Cambridge’s chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

Lewis left his long Oxford post in 1954 to become the first holder of the newly created chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The appointment recognized his scholarship in older English literature, including his work on medieval and Renaissance texts. He continued teaching and writing in Cambridge until his death in 1963.

His academic career had begun at Oxford, where he became a Fellow and tutor in English at Magdalen College in 1925. The two colleges have easily confused names: Oxford has Magdalen College, while Cambridge has Magdalene College. Lewis’s Cambridge appointment therefore marked both a change of university and a move to a college whose spelling differs by one letter.

Lewis’s criticism included The Allegory of Love, published in 1936, and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, published in 1954. His literary scholarship existed alongside his fiction and Christian writing, but the Cambridge chair was specifically focused on medieval and Renaissance literature.