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Hopefully this is on topic here, since it is about a famous fantasy writer.

Tolkien was a professor of the English language and Anglo-Saxon literature. He held two named chairs at Oxford: the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon and then the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. He also gave an evidently influential lecture on Beowulf called Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

But it isn't really apparent from any online biographical materials whether or not Tolkien was well-regarded as an academic, independent of his literary contributions. That is to say: Would Tolkien have been considered an important or influential professor of English language if he hadn't also written some very famous works of fiction?

kingledion
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    The title here does not match the question - he was clearly "good" at his job, otherwise he would have hardly become an Oxford professor. In the body you ask rather whether he would have been of outstanding importance in his day job. – xLeitix Apr 12 '18 at 16:11
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    @xLeitix I rejected a change to the title, because I asked it that way on purpose. I wanted to know if Tolkien was a good English professor. I re-asked the question in a different way to add other ways of defining 'good'. I stand by my original title. – kingledion Apr 13 '18 at 12:56
  • @xLeitix Indeed, he was clearly "very good" at his job, since he became two Oxford professors! – David Richerby Apr 13 '18 at 17:39
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    A nice way to formalize "how good is good?" would be to ask whether Tolkien passes Wikipedia's Average Professor Test, which basically states that having a good academic career isn't by itself enough notability to have your own article. From the answers here, I suppose he wouldn't pass the test without his fiction work. –  Apr 14 '18 at 01:47
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    Academically or scholastically? One of those is good for the school, the other for the student. – Mazura Apr 14 '18 at 15:53
  • @Mazura Up to you! – kingledion Apr 14 '18 at 15:54
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    @user37208 Soooo ... being "good at your job" is defined at "good enough to warrant a Wikipedia article"? I stand by my claim that OP is not looking for "good", but for "outstanding". – xLeitix Apr 14 '18 at 18:47

3 Answers3

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"Influential"? No, probably not. He seems to have been a competent teacher (though apparently he was a terrible mumbler who was frequently hard to understand) and a competent scholar. Note: I'm not saying he was mediocre: You don't get a named professorship at Oxford by being ordinary!

People who should know have said that his essay "The Monsters and the Critics" is a major work of Beowulf scholarship and changed the way people looked at the poem. This may be the most influential thing he wrote as a scholar. The rest of his work tends to be noticed mainly because of who he became later with LotR.

There's a good very short bio by The Tolkien Society which comments "His academic life was otherwise largely unremarkable. In 1945 he changed his chair to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he retained until his retirement in 1959. Apart from all the above, he taught undergraduates, and played an important but unexceptional part in academic politics and administration."

He does have one handicap: His approach to English (through philology) was on the way out even during his career and being replaced by a focus on modern literature. (Tolkien was involved in academic battles between the two schools). His work is consequently "out of style" and probably more likely to be cited today in language and medieval history departments than in English departments. See the first page of the article by Jill Fitzgerald (which, unfortunately is all that seems to be online) for more discussion.

In the end, I think it's fair to say that had he not written The Hobbit, LotR, etc., he'd be remembered as an ordinary mid-century Oxford professor, one of the many Oxfordians who were part of C. S. Lewis's Inklings club.

(Edited to add some detail developed in the comments.)

lfurini
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Mark Olson
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    What's your source for all this? – DCOPTimDowd Apr 11 '18 at 17:12
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    A biography and books on the Inklings. (Also, if you listen to some of the records of him reciting from his work when he was trying to enunciate, he's not especially easy to understand.)

    If it matters I'm sure I could find specific cites.

     – Mark Olson Apr 11 '18 at 17:14
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    I would also mention that he became an Oxford Professor at 26, which is a remarkable achievement in and of itself. – sharur Apr 11 '18 at 20:07
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    “an ordinary mid-century Oxford professor” is still a “yes”, for whether someone was good at their day job. – ShreevatsaR Apr 12 '18 at 03:02
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    Don't have a ref handy, but Diana Wynne Jones had commented on classes she took in writing when in Oxford, unfavorably comparing Tolkein's lecture organization and inaudibility to C. S. Lewis's clarity. – sq33G Apr 12 '18 at 06:14
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    @ShreevatsaR: Agreed! (And I said so in my comments.) But that's only the title. The actual question raised a higher standard: "Would Tolkien have been considered an important or influential professor of English language if he hadn't also written some very famous works of fiction?" and I think the answer there is that he would not. The title probably ought to be changed to better reflect the question. – Mark Olson Apr 12 '18 at 11:43
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Null Apr 12 '18 at 13:34
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    @sharur From Wikipedia, it looks like he became a Professor at Leeds some time after 1920, when he was appointed a Reader there (at age 28). His Professorship at Oxford was then in 1925, i.e. at 33. Still very young, but not age 26 (when he was still in the army). – owjburnham Apr 12 '18 at 17:30
  • Did he have any famous doctoral students? – Martin Schröder Apr 12 '18 at 21:25
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    Where do you have it from that the Inkling's were Lewis's club? Wikipedia indicates that its founder was a different person, and there is nothing on it indicating that the group was lead by Lewis – eirikdaude Apr 13 '18 at 12:34
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    @eirikdaude: My point was that without the fame of LotR, it would be Lewis and Lewis alone who was famous. The Inklings would be remembered for its association with him, not for its association with Tolkien and him. – Mark Olson Apr 13 '18 at 12:52
  • @ShreevatsaR “an ordinary mid-century Oxford professor” is still a “yes”, for whether someone was good at their day job. ...enh... when the industry standard for your job is life-long protection from being fired, except in egregious instances of misconduct or malfeasance (we call this protection "tenure"), simply having a prestigious job is even less indicative of competence than it normally is. I'm not qualified to say whether he actually was good at his job or not, but it's less a less straightforward question to answer than you seem to think. – HopelessN00b Apr 13 '18 at 14:49
  • @Martin Schröder It's hard to prove a negative, but after looking through a biography, his bibliography, the Hammond and Scull Chronology and doing some googling, I can't find any hint that he ever had a doctoral student, mush less a famous one. It appears that he only taught undergrads. – Mark Olson Apr 13 '18 at 17:21
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    @HopelessN00b Note that the British system uses the word "professor" in a very different way to American universities. In the UK, it corresponds to what would essentially be a named chair in a US university. Sure, it's very hard to fire such a person but you don't get appointed to that position without demonstrating unusual competence. – David Richerby Apr 13 '18 at 17:44
  • @DavidRicherby Sure, that's probable. But we wouldn't have to look to hard to find people in prestigious positions, academic or otherwise, on either side of the pond, primarily because of their connections rather than their competence. Just pointing out that a prestigious job in an allegedly meritocratic society is not the ironclad guarantee of competence it probably ought to be, so the answer isn't the simple equivalence that ShreevatsaR pointed out. – HopelessN00b Apr 13 '18 at 17:48
  • The link to Jill Fitzgerald's article provides the whole article if you (or, more likely, your academic employer) has a subscription. – David Richerby Apr 13 '18 at 17:55
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    @MarkOlson: for what it's worth, the "English" degree at Oxford focussed heavily on Anglo-Saxon at least up until the time I was there (not doing English), which was 1996-2000. There's still a compulsory Anglo-Saxon paper in the first year, "Early medieval literature 650–1350". So while Tolkien's work quite possibly is "more likely to be cited today in language and medieval history departments", in his natural habitat at Oxford the English department remains a "language and medieval history department" in addition to covering Modern English! – Steve Jessop Apr 13 '18 at 17:59
  • @sq33G I don't know that "inferior to CS Lewis" is all that damning. – fectin Apr 14 '18 at 13:07
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    @MarkOlson not so sure - most of Lewis's fame stems from his books, which were largely inspired by his faith, and Tolkien seems to have been the one who introduced him to Christianity [an aside: real believers will assume that someone else would have been the messenger, though, so maybe this is a weak argument] – Will Crawford Apr 15 '18 at 14:12
  • @Will Crawford: Lewis's conversion happened around 1930, years before Tolkien wrote The Hobbit (mid-30s) or LotR (40s). They were friends and colleagues for the rest of Lewis's life and there's no reason to think that this would have changed if Tolkien had never written his books. In fact, at the time of Lewis's death in 1963, Lewis was still probably the more famous. It was only in the late 60s that LotR turned from a treasure known only to a (comparative) few to a world-wide phenomenon. – Mark Olson Apr 15 '18 at 14:20
  • @Mark I think I was answering a question along the lines of "What if Tolkien hadn't been there?", which of course isn't what you meant. I'm sorry :o) – Will Crawford Apr 16 '18 at 15:32
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I note that Tolkien was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature but I don't know if that was for his fiction or his scholarly work or both.

Tolkien was also a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and I think that I read that honor was given for his scholarly work and not for his fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#First_World_War1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_of_Literature#Membership2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire3

M. A. Golding
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    Without some sources to indicate whether these were because of his LOTR fame, this answer is pretty worthless. – Valorum Apr 11 '18 at 18:13
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    He got his OBE in 1972, the year before he died. It was for "Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. For services to English Literature." according to Wikipedia. The citation (assuming that's the whole of it) seems to be vague and may be deliberately vague. If they were very sensitive, they would have known that on the "Languages vs. Literature" battles within the UK English faculties during Tolkien's career, he was solidly on the "Languages" side. If so, the OBE is a nod to his fiction, not to his academic work. – Mark Olson Apr 11 '18 at 18:39
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    "Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. For services to English Literature." is the entire citation. – Mark Olson Apr 11 '18 at 18:47
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    "For services to English Literature" appears to be a typical citation for literary critics/scholars of English — William Empson was made a Knight Bachelor for services to English Literature, Orwell scholar Peter Davison got an OBE, Shakespeare scholar G. Wilson Knight got a CBE. Which is not to say it wasn't Tolkien's fiction that put him over the top. – David Moles Apr 11 '18 at 19:14
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    The timing is suggestive, but not conclusive: Tolkien retired in 1957. LotR, while published in the early 50s, became a phenomenon only in the mid-60s when the Ballantine paperback editions were published. The 1972 date seems late if it was primarily based on his academic work, but seems about what you'd expect if it was primarily a response to the explosion of LotR in the late 60s. Though even if it was primarily for the books, the fact that he was a retired professor at Oxford doubtless made it easier for the "Fantasy is no good!" crowd to swallow. – Mark Olson Apr 11 '18 at 20:24
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From what I've read, it seems Tolkien was well respected in his field at the time. Admittedly it has been a couple decades or more since I read Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, and it's possible that Carpenter overstated Tolkien's influence in linguistics. However, the impression I came away with from the book is that Tolkien was well respected for his work in the field by his peers.

Also, back in college I took a literature class in which the text was (an earlier edition of) The Norton Anthology of World Literature. One of the works in that anthology was The Song of the Seeress. The translation used was actually dedicated to Tolkien with a note that his translation was the definitive one. (I believe the anthology didn't use Tolkien's version due to copyright issues.)

GreenMatt
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