What was C.S. Lewis’s first academic chair at the University of Cambridge called?

C.S. Lewis’s Cambridge chair was called Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

In 1954, Lewis became the first holder of the newly established chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge. The appointment marked his move from Oxford, where he had been a Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College since 1925.

The title reflects Lewis’s specialist scholarship. He studied and taught literature from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, including works written before the modern English literary canon took its present shape. His academic books include The Allegory of Love and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama.

Lewis continued to hold the Cambridge chair until his death in 1963. He remained associated with Magdalen College, Cambridge, and did not abandon Oxford entirely. A frequent mistake is to describe him simply as a professor of theology: Christianity shaped much of his public writing, but his university appointment was in literature.