C.S. Lewis studied Classics at Oxford before becoming an English literature scholar.
After serving in the First World War, Lewis returned to Oxford and completed a demanding sequence of studies. He achieved firsts in Honour Moderations, Greats, and English. His classical education gave him a strong foundation in Greek and Latin literature, ancient philosophy, mythology, and medieval traditions.
Lewis’s academic career eventually centered on English literature. He taught at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954 and later became a professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. His writing continued to draw on classical and medieval sources, including myth, allegory, epic, and Christian thought.
The answer is sometimes confused with “English,” which was the field of his later university teaching. Classics describes the earlier subject in which Lewis established his academic credentials before moving into English studies.