What was the name of Tolkien’s Oxford professorship in Old English from 1925?

J.R.R. Tolkien became the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University in 1925. The chair was attached to Pembroke College, where he taught Old English language and literature until 1945.

The professorship reflected Tolkien’s scholarly expertise in texts such as Beowulf, the Old English epic that influenced his thinking about monsters, heroes and the uses of myth. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped redirect academic attention toward the poem’s artistry rather than treating it only as historical evidence.

In 1945 Tolkien moved to Oxford’s Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he held until retiring in 1959. The two titles are therefore both associated with him, but the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair was his first Oxford professorship.