What title did J.R.R. Tolkien hold as a professor at Oxford’s Merton College?

J.R.R. Tolkien held the title Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. He took up the chair in 1959, after a long academic career focused on languages, literature, and philology.

Before moving to Merton College, Tolkien had been Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College. His scholarship included work on Old English texts, Middle English literature, and the history of language. His famous lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change how the poem was studied by emphasizing its artistic structure and imaginative power.

Tolkien retired from his Oxford professorship in 1971. His academic work and creative writing were closely connected: knowledge of historical languages helped him construct believable languages, while his literary imagination encouraged him to think about myths, stories, and cultural memory.

The title is sometimes shortened informally to “Merton Professor,” but its full official name identifies the subject of his chair and distinguishes it from his earlier Anglo-Saxon professorship.