What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first major Oxford professorship, held from 1925?

J.R.R. Tolkien became the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford in 1925.

The professorship placed Tolkien at the center of the academic study of Old English, the language of works such as Beowulf. His expertise in historical linguistics and medieval literature strongly influenced both his scholarship and his creative writing. He held the chair until 1945.

Tolkien later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, a separate and later appointment that he held from 1945 until 1959. These two professorships are often mixed up because both were prominent Oxford positions associated with his career.

His academic interests were not limited to vocabulary and grammar. Tolkien argued that myths, stories, and languages could be studied as interconnected cultural creations. His 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” became especially influential in reshaping modern views of the poem.