J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic specialty before becoming Merton Professor was Anglo-Saxon.
In 1925, Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. He held that post until 1945, when he moved to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. Anglo-Saxon is the traditional academic name for Old English, the language spoken in England before the Norman Conquest and in later forms during the Middle Ages.
Tolkien’s training in Old English and related Germanic languages shaped his understanding of words, sound changes, names, and heroic literature. His scholarship on Beowulf was especially influential. The lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936, argued that the poem’s monsters were central to its artistic design rather than embarrassing distractions.
The term Anglo-Saxon can also describe the early English people or their culture, but here it refers specifically to Tolkien’s academic field and professorial chair. His later title covered a broader range of English language and literature.