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Oxford University is the oldest university in England, dating
to 1287, when it was established from an amalgam of colleges
run by various branches of the Church. The colleges at Oxford
(and later Cambridge) remained independent financial institutions
which separately arranged for the tutoring of undergraduates.
However, undergraduates at all the colleges attended common
university lectures and took common university exams. Most tutors
had rooms in their college, rather than in their department,
and undergraduates would meet their tutors in their offices
for one-on-one tutorials on a regular basis. There were no ‘classes’
as such. This system continues today. There was also no campus;
university and college buildings were scattered around the town.
Oxford and Cambridge had turbulent histories during the Reformation
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, they remained bastions of the Anglican
Church (Church of England), actively promoting its place in
English society. Until the late nineteenth century most college
instructors (called 'fellows') had to take holy orders and were
not permitted to get married whilst they held their posts.
Late Victorian reforms slowly changed the face of Oxford. The
introduction of fellowships not tied to religious orders gradually
secularised learning and the city became populated with a new
class of professional academics (often referred to as 'dons',
more or less synonymous with the American use of 'professors')
and their families. Students came largely from upper-class families
and the aristocracy, and they were waited on by 'scouts' (college
servants). For the small group of ‘poor scholars’, middle class
students who came to Oxford on scholarships, social snobbery
was a frequent experience. Fortunately for Tolkien, his college,
Exeter College, had no tradition of social snobbery, and the
few Catholics there eagerly sought him out (hostility to Catholicism
in the English universities was slow to die out). Although he
was often short of money, Tolkien participated in many college
activities, playing rugby and joining the college Essay Club
and the Dialectical Society. In addition, he was active in a
good many more informal societies which frequently met in pubs
and other eateries and were the social life of the university.
The company was almost exclusively male, as only a few women
students existed as yet, and they lived in all-female colleges
on the edge of town and had to be chaperoned in the company
of young men. This, however, was a relatively normal state of
affairs for most of the male students, since most had attended
all-male ‘public school’ (private boarding schools) prior to
coming to Oxford.
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This state of affairs was slowly changing, and the changes
were notably apparent in the development of the School of English.
English as a subject was a relatively new thing which only developed
in the nineteenth century. The only models scholars had for
studying literature written in English (or any modern, living
language) were the study of Latin and Greek, which were also
the only literatures which Tolkien studied in school. In the
nineteenth century the techniques of studying these dead languages
and their literatures (collectively referred to as the discipline
of philology) were transfered to ancient English texts, largely
as a result of Victorian nationalism which fuelled interest
in England’s medieval past. As a result, the Oxford English
curriculum consisted almost entirely of learning how to read
ancient English texts and of the early history of the English
language. By the 1920s students were being allowed to study
small amounts of ‘modern’ literature (by which was meant anything
after the fourteenth century, including Shakespeare) as an option.
In addition, the social dynamic of those reading English (the
term ‘reading’ means following a course of studies) was changing.
were not always approved of. In 1922 the young C.S. Lewis wrote
of his experiences at Oxford: ‘The atmosphere of the English
School is very different from that of the Greats. Women, Indians,
and Americans predominate and – I can’t say how – one feels
a certain amateurishness in the talk and look of the people’.
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Lewis’ comments – sexism and racism aside – reveal the process
of change which was taking place in the discipline. Pressure
had begun to grow for the study of ‘modern’ literature in modern
English. Many resisted this pressure since it appeared to consist
of what we would call today ‘dumbing down’. It takes a real
professional scholar to learn to read medieval English, but
any amateur can read Dickens. However, the old philological
curriculum was not above criticism. It had gradually begun to
concentrate solely on the study of the English language, so
that students rarely saw more than a few texts in anthologies.
No doubt, this is why the philological component of the curriculum
was referred to as ‘language’ for short, although it was technically
more than just linguistics. By the time Tolkien was elected
Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in 1925 there
was a full-fledged debate over the role of language and literature
in the curriculum. Those on the ‘LANG’ side believed that students
should concentrate on linguistic study and ancient texts, whereas
those on the ‘LIT’ side believed that students should concentrate
on literary criticism, particularly for modern texts. The ‘LIT’
group was also heavily influenced by a growing belief that the
study of literature could lead to self-improvement, a philosophy
of ‘liberal studies’ which Tolkien abhorred. However, in one
respect, Tolkien agreed with the ‘LIT’ group. He believed that
the ‘LANG’ component of the curriculum had become sterile, and
that students were spending their time memorising linguistic
rules rather than reading the literature he loved. Tolkien proposed
a solution to the debate by creating two courses of study, which
students could choose from. Course A concentrated on language
and medieval literature and required little study of modern
literature. Course B concentrated on modern literature, although
it still required much study of language and medieval literature.
Once casualty of this course structure was that a cut-off date
of 1830 was chosen for both courses; literature after this date
– including Victorian literature – was practically abolished
from the curriculum. Tolkien’s reform was adopted in 1931.
The life of an Oxford University student or professor was very
different from the life of students and professors at Cal State
Northridge today, and it is difficult to give a summary of the
differences. The pictures on this page come from the Oxford
Tolkien Society's Tolkien's
Oxford Page, which has many more pictures and short explanations
of their relevance to Tolkien's life. You can learn more by
going to the Oxford
University web site (which also contains links to the sites
of the individual colleges). Also, the chapter
'Oxford Life' in Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien
helps give some sense of what the life of an Oxford don was
like in the 1930s.
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