The recent publication of his translation of Beowulf (2014, ed. Turville-Petre) and a study on the story of Finn and Hengest that is found in both Beowulf and the Old English ‘Finnsburh Fragment” (1982, ed. Works published after Tolkien’s death include an edition and translation of the Old English poem Exodus (1982, ed. Tolkien’s fascination with another Old English poem, The Battle of Maldon, led to the publication of two scholarly essays and a fictional, dramatic epilogue to the poem: The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son (1953). His lecture ‘ Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’ (1936) is possibly one of the most-cited studies in his field, shaping a new literary-critical approach to the poem. Tolkien’s views on Old English literature have been published before and after his death and have had a great impact on the scholarship. In this course, we will study Tolkien’s academic publications on the field of Old English, particularly the poem Beowulf, both in their own right and in relation to his fictional world. Middle-Earth, the world Tolkien created in his fictional work, was heavily influenced by his academic interests and shows the great debt that Tolkien owed to the language and literature of early medieval England. Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), his day job was university professor at the University of Oxford, where he lectured mostly on Old English language and literature. A basic working knowledge of Old English language and literature is required students who haven’t followed a course in Old English can contact the tutor some weeks before the course starts for an alternative, online means to grasp the basics of Old English.
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