J.R.R. Tolkien’s early Oxford academic specialty was Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English.
In 1925 he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. His work focused on the language and literature of early medieval England, including texts such as Beowulf, whose monsters, heroic style, and historical atmosphere influenced his imagination.
Tolkien later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945. His scholarship was not separate from his creative work: he believed that languages and the stories associated with them developed together, and he invented languages partly to give fictional peoples distinctive histories and cultures.
His academic career is sometimes reduced to “medieval literature,” which is broadly accurate but less specific. Anglo-Saxon identifies the field of his first Oxford chair and distinguishes it from his later, wider professorship in English language and literature.