Which Oxford subject did J.R.R. Tolkien teach as a professor from 1925?

J.R.R. Tolkien taught Anglo-Saxon as an Oxford professor from 1925.

In 1925, Tolkien became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. The field is now often called Old English studies and focuses on the language and literature of early medieval England. Tolkien held the Oxford chair until 1945.

His academic work strongly influenced his fiction. He studied languages as historical systems, examined how words changed over time, and drew on Old English, Norse, Welsh, Finnish, and other traditions when developing his invented languages and legends. His famous lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped reshape modern understanding of the poem.

Tolkien later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. He was therefore both a specialist in early English and a major literary author, but he was not primarily a historian or a classical Greek professor.