J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic subject at Oxford was Anglo-Saxon when he held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship.
Tolkien held the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1945. The position involved the study and teaching of Old English language and literature, including works such as Beowulf. Tolkien later became the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.
His scholarly work strongly influenced his fiction. He studied how languages develop, how words change, and how myths and stories survive through texts. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped redirect academic attention toward the poem’s literary qualities rather than treating it only as historical evidence.
The term Anglo-Saxon in this academic title refers primarily to Old English language and literature. Tolkien also studied and used Old Norse, Welsh, Finnish, Latin, and Greek, but those were not the subject named by this Oxford professorship.