Which university did J.R.R. Tolkien serve as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature?

J.R.R. Tolkien served as Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

Tolkien held several academic positions at Oxford during a career focused on philology, Old English, Middle English, and related languages. He was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon from 1925 to 1945, then Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 until 1959.

His academic work included the influential lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” delivered in 1936. The lecture helped shift attention toward the poem’s artistic structure and monsters rather than treating it mainly as a historical source.

Oxford was also central to Tolkien’s friendships and literary life. He was a member of the informal literary group known as the Inklings, which included C.S. Lewis. Tolkien’s university career and his fiction developed alongside one another.