J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic specialty when he taught Old English at Oxford was philology.
Philology studies languages through their historical development, including changes in sounds, grammar, vocabulary, and written texts. Tolkien trained in the subject and applied it to Old English, Middle English, Old Norse, Welsh, Gothic, and other languages. His professional work included close analysis of words, manuscripts, and literary traditions.
This background profoundly affected his fiction. Tolkien often began with a language and developed the peoples, histories, and stories that would give that language a believable cultural setting. The invented languages of Middle-earth were therefore not merely lists of fantasy words; they had sound systems, grammatical patterns, and historical relationships.
Philology is sometimes confused with linguistics in general, but the terms are not identical. Modern linguistics covers a wider range of theoretical and descriptive approaches, while philology traditionally emphasizes historical language study and texts. Tolkien’s famous lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936, showed how his scholarship and literary judgment worked together.