The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 3: Reader’s Guide PART 2. Christina Scull
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Course I.
Course III was for those whose main interest was literature. Candidates took papers on Modern English; on Old English and Middle English with set texts different than those in Courses I and II; Chaucer and his contemporaries; Shakespeare and Contemporary English Dramatists; Spenser and Milton; and three papers covering English Literature from 1400 to 1830. Candidates wishing to offer a tenth paper could choose from English Literature from 1830 to 1900; a literary subject studied in relation to political or social history; Greek Literary Criticism; Virgil and his relation to English Literature; Roman Satire; the influence of Italian Literature on English Literature in the sixteenth century; or French Classical Drama.
After the Second World War there was again pressure on the English School for a change of syllabus. Jose Harris comments that
the faculty of English … was dominated by the principle that the evolution of English both as a living and a literary language should be studied from its earliest roots in the Anglo-Saxon period. This principle generated a powerful and fertile school of Old and Middle English scholarship; but it also led to an undergraduate degree course dominated by philology and language studies, within which even the most ‘literary’ options included no writing after 1830. Moreover the rise of the powerful new genre of twentieth-century literary criticism was virtually ignored …. [‘The Arts and Social Sciences, 1939–1970’ in The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 8: The Twentieth Century (1994), p. 239]
Harris points out that *C.S. Lewis in particular firmly set himself against the new criticism. His
towering personality exerted great influence over colleagues and students alike, but from the start of the post-war period there were murmurings of dissent, partly against the monopoly of philology, partly against the exclusion from the syllabus of any echo of the new criticism, partly against the permeation of the faculty’s intellectual life by values that were deemed not literary but religious and moral. [p. 240]
In the years immediately after the war the English Faculty Board again sought to create a Preliminary Examination in English Language and Literature (First Public Examination). This was finally established by statute coming into force in Michaelmas Term 1948. Tolkien was a member of the committee that drafted the statute, and dealt with various emendations. In a reply to the General Board in March 1948 the committee said that ‘the English Preliminary is as wide as any examination of this kind can be for it asks for a knowledge of a classical, a medieval and a modern language (other than English) as well as a study of some important critical problems’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/1/2).
In 1954 there was an attempt to make ‘English Literature from 1830 to 1920’ a compulsory rather than optional paper for students taking Course III in the Final Honour Examination. A committee comprising Tolkien, *J.N. Bryson, *Lord David Cecil, Humphry House, and *F.P. Wilson considered the question and recommended the change, but the proposal was rejected at a meeting of the English Faculty on 18 May 1954 (see entry in Chronology for that date, and note to the entry). Another committee, of which Tolkien was not a member, was set up on 21 January 1955 to discuss both the Final Honour School and the Preliminary Examination. Its report eventually led to changes in the syllabus, but these came into effect after Tolkien’s retirement.
During the latter half of the twentieth century Philology and the Language side of the Oxford English School gradually declined in popularity. Although a campaign to abolish compulsory Old English for students on the Literature side failed in 1991, it was eventually successful. Old English ceased to be a compulsory part of the First Public Examination for students who matriculated in Michaelmas Term 2002. According to Tom Shippey, these actions ‘removed a vital tool from literary study …. More disastrous has been the pedagogical failure. Most students of English leave university … with no knowledge of their own language …. It prevents them from improving their own ability to write, except of course what they learn by trial and error.’ Also lost is ‘a sense of the depth of time, and of the continuous never-broken links between one generation and other, which takes us back from modern to Middle and Old English …’ (Patrick Curry, ‘Patrick Curry Interview with Tom Shippey’, Journal of Tolkien Research 2, no. 1 (2015), article 4, p. 2).
FACULTY
From a series of reports or submissions made by Tolkien and others on behalf of the English Faculty Board, the Oxford English School seems to have been chronically short of lecturers and tutors, imposing a heavy burden on all its members. In May 1928 Tolkien typed and was one of five signatories to the report of the Committee on Tuition in Linguistic Subjects in the English School.
The Committee desire to point out that at present neither the University nor the colleges are able to provide for Male candidates special tuition in the linguistic subjects of the English School that is comparable in range or thoroughness to that given in literature, or sufficient in amount or quality to enable these candidates to satisfy the minimum requirements of the statutes.
The lack of such tuition has been responsible in the past for the low standard of philological knowledge shown by candidates in the examinations: a serious defect to which the examiners have repeatedly drawn the attention of the Board ….
The Committee wish to record, also, the view that the linguistic and literary subjects of the curriculum are intended to be simultaneous and complementary studies, and that, it is very undesirable that candidates should be allowed to relegate either the one or the other (according to their specialization) to a brief portion only of the period of their reading, whatever may be, now or in the future, the practical necessities of tutorial arrangements. [Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/1]
On 20 May 1929 Tolkien seems to have been involved with H.C. Wyld and C.T. Onions in drafting a request to the General Board of Faculties for the appointment of a lecturer to teach English Language for the Honour School of English Language and Literature.
The official teachers of these subjects are at present three: the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of A-S, and the Reader in English Philology. The two Professors normally give from two to three times the amount of public instruction required by statute, not infrequently dealing with elementary parts of their subjects. The Reader from time to time also gives courses beyond the statutory requirements, as he is doing, by special request, in the present Trinity Term. All three, if they are to consider the needs of the School, are obliged to neglect considerable sections of the subjects which ought to be adequately represented in the University, and still the linguistic syllabus of the School is not covered. [Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/1]
*C.L. Wrenn was appointed Lecturer in English Philology for one year from 1 October 1930, and then to a University Lecturership in English Language for five years from 1 October 1931; and *Dorothy Everett to a University Lecturership in the Middle English for five years from 1 October 1930.
On 15 May 1931 Tolkien and Nichol Smith submitted to the English Board a draft on the needs of the English Faculty for submission to the General Board. As submitted after emendation this listed three main needs: the establishment of a statutory University Lecturership in English Literature; the endowment of a readership or lecturership in (medieval) Scandinavian languages; and a new building for the English Faculty library. Tolkien surely drafted the justification for the second request, for the burden of Scandinavian studies fell on him: ‘Norse literature and philology are of central importance in the mediaeval curriculum of the English School. Adequate provision for the teaching of these subjects, and for the direction of advanced studies is urgently required. No provision for Scandinavian studies has been made by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages since 1916’ (Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/3). It was not until 1941 that the first election to the newly created Vigfússon Readership in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities relieved Tolkien of those duties.
The Second World War produced added problems and burdens. There might have been fewer male students in Oxford, but several members of the English Faculty left to take up war work, and University restrictions made replacing them difficult. In addition, the English Faculty were asked to provide short courses for Navy and Air Force cadets during their training, which not only needed new lectures but successive courses continued through traditional university vacations; and a special