The Relation and Influences of Tolkien’s Writing with His Scholarly Work

J. R. R. Tolkien is renowned for his famous works on the fictional world of Middle-Earth with his novels, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These books are filled with immensely detailed mythology, tales, poems and songs, and even creative languages to show the diversity of different cultures. While Tolkien wrote these fictional pieces, he was also a scholar at Oxford where he taught and studied Old English and Scandinavian history and language. It was from his thorough studies that we later see Tolkien’s scholarly work showing heavy influence on his creations. Some of these influences were Old English words, letters, and phonetics that Tolkien would use to create names of characters and places. Furthermore, some Anglo-Saxon poems were also used as guidelines for Tolkien’s works, showing similarities in rhyming patterns, meter, and style. However, the largest influence story-wise, came from the mythology of epic poems, most notably the style and plotline of Beowulf. Throughout the chapters of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and other stories based in the fictional world of Middle-Earth, we see J.R.R. Tolkien’s scholarly work on the Old English language, poems, and mythology are a major influence to creating his novels