J.R.R. Tolkien is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, fantasy writer of all time. However, he was not only a remarkable writer, but also a very accomplished scholar. Tolkien was born on the 3rd of January 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. Three years later his family moved back to England and settled in Birmingham, which would later become a source of inspiration for some of Tolkien’s more grim elements of the Middle Earth. His mother taught him the basics of Latin at a very early age, which prompted Tolkien’s love of languages. As a result, in 1915 Tolkien enrolled in Oxford’s Exeter College to study Classics, later switching to English Language and Literature (Tolkien 1981). However, his promising academic career was interrupted by World War I, in which Tolkien took part as a member of the Lancashire Fusiliers and was deployed to fight in France. …show more content…
In 1920 he accepted the position of Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, where he contributed greatly to the development of the linguistic part of the English department: in his application letter (Tolkien 1981) for the vacant post of the Bosworth and Rawlinson Professor of Anglo-Saxon in Oxford, he highlights his efforts as the first and only linguist on the staff. Tolkien taught courses mainly on ancient languages, history of language, and translation, but he made sure that the study of literature and language were not separated, as he believed that such division would be of great disadvantage to both fields (Tolkien 1981). Despite the fact that his duties as professor at Leeds prevented him from publishing, over his five years there he managed to compile A Middle English Vocabulary, translate The Pearl, Sir Orfeo, and Sir Gawain, and finish an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green