J.R.R. Tolkien’s Oxford academic specialty in the title he held from 1925 was Anglo-Saxon.
In 1925 Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. The field, now commonly called Old English studies, examines the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England. Tolkien held the post until 1945, when he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.
His scholarship included the influential lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936. Tolkien’s professional study of languages, medieval texts, philology, and mythology strongly informed his creative work, though Middle-earth is not simply a retelling of Old English literature. The Rohirrim, for example, use names and cultural elements that evoke Anglo-Saxon tradition, while Tolkien also drew on Norse, Finnish, Welsh, and other sources. Anglo-Saxon was therefore his academic field, not the name of a fictional language in his novels.