[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I don't know; I once had to talk about 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' for a seminar, which went into the 'money for old rope' category.

The interesting point is that almost all of the academics mentioned above are concerned in some way with medieval studies. Jane Chance was in Nottingham last year, delivering an Institute for Medieval Studies lecture; Tom Shippey used to occupy Tolkien's old chair at Leeds, and writes mainly on Old English and Old Norse literature. Michael Drout teaches Old English, but has also done work on Herman Melville (an author whose works received hardly any critical approval when they were published). Also, as Lalwende has pointed out, the majority of British Tolkien courses are concerned mainly with his sources, be it from the perspective of folklore, myth or medieval literature. I know that some of the English faculty at Nottingham wanted to set up just such a course to lead students into early medieval studies through a study of Tolkien's influences.

I think that the reason for this, aside from Tolkien's persistent problems with scholars of English literature, is that British universities are often wary of devoting entire courses to single authors. Exceptions tend to be hardy perennials like Chaucer and Shakespeare or the institution's more distinguished alumni, as in the case of D.H. Lawrence. This approach makes sense, since there are just so many British vernacular writers from the seventh century to the present day that much of the corpus can only really be understood in terms of eras and movements. To be honest, I think that as a subject of academic study Tolkien really isn't prolific or accepted enough to warrant his own courses just yet. In the medieval community he's accepted largely for two reasons: firstly because his academic work in that field has been so influential, and secondly because the tools he uses in his fiction are more acceptable to someone who enjoys medieval literature than they are to someone who prefers the late-twentieth-century novel. To my mind, if Tolkien fits into any movement it's the medieval Nordic revival spearheaded by people like William Morris, which was finally killed off by the Nazis when they adopted a lot of its influences. That, I suppose, would make a very interesting course, or at least a lecture, but, like most courses that could involve JRRT, it would require a lot of cross-faculty co-operation and the study of some unfashionable and obscure people.

Nonetheless, universities, whatever they might say, are followers of profit and fashion. With more and more people discovering both him and medieval studies, Tolkien may yet appear on more syllabi just as a matter of supply and demand. Obviously Oxford isn't likely to lose many 'customers' (apparently students should be regarded as such nowadays) by ignoring him, but other, less secure, institutions might feel tempted to jump on the Tolkien bandwagon. If, as Germaine Greer lamented, Tolkien has proven to be the most influential writer of his century, it may be inevitable that his work will get its own courses. Time will tell, and the only objection I can think of is that Tolkien would have preferred it if people were to study Cynewulf or Bede rather than him. Personally I prefer to apply academic tools to the private study of his work, which is cheaper and doesn't threaten to take the fun out of it.