Tolkien was for thirty-five years (1925-59) a professor of English. But that phrase did not mean then what it means now. In the first place the title "Professor" meant the holder of a Chair, a distinction achieved by few faculty members. More important, as Professor of English Language, Tolkien specialized neither in literary criticism nor in modern linguistics, but rather in comparative philology. This was the study of languages, especially ancient languages, and of the literatures written in those languages. Tolkien believed strongly that to study language without literature was ultimately sterile, to study literature without language was just amateurish.

Tolkien's major professional works demonstrate this belief. He edited the fourteenth-century romance (fictional adventure) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with his Leeds colleague E. V. Gordon in 1925. In its glossary, the editors not only gave the meaning of every word, but also the origin of each one, in Old English, ...

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