the degree was introduced, a smaller number of students working towards the D.Phil. David Nichol Smith defined the difference between the B.Litt. and the D.Phil. in his paper ‘The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy’ delivered to the Fourth Congress of the Universities of the British Empire in Edinburgh on 8 July 1931:
All B.Litt. Probationers attend classes in such subjects as Elizabethan handwriting, the relation of manuscripts, the establishment of texts, the history of English editing of English Studies, bibliography, the resources of the Bodleian. In these classes they are instructed in the use of their tools, and after three terms’ instruction they are examined. They have then to submit a specimen piece of prentice work – their dissertation. They have to pass this double test before they get the B.Litt. in English Literature.
A very good man who has been placed in 1st Class in an Oxford Honour School, or who comes with high qualifications from another University, may start on his work for the D.Phil. in English without taking what we now regard as the preliminary degree, but he is well advised to attend the preliminary course of instruction …. The man who gains the B.Litt. is understood to be competent to research, the man who gains the D.Phil. has researched so successfully as to have made contributions to his subject which deserve to be made known to other scholars. [offprint of Proceedings of the Congress, in Oxford University Archives FA 4/5/2/1]
Napier died in 1916, but his successor to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, another philologist, *Henry Cecil Wyld, did not take the chair until 1920. Also in 1920 *C.T. Onions was appointed to a new lecturership in English, and in 1927 became Reader in English Philology. The number of students in the English School increased greatly after the First World War (fifty men and fifty-two women took the Final Honour Examination in 1923, versus twelve men and twenty-five women in 1913), and gradually the colleges began to provide their own teachers in the discipline.
On his return to Oxford in 1925, after being elected to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, Tolkien found among his colleagues several who had taught him as an undergraduate. Over the years many of his own students also became colleagues, and by the time he retired in 1959 many on the English faculty had studied under him at Oxford as undergraduates or had been supervised or examined by him for the B.Litt. or D.Phil.
In 1925 the English School was still part of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Literature, but in Michaelmas Term 1926 became a separate faculty, of English Language and Literature, with its own board. One of the board’s first actions, in an attempt to improve the quality of the Language papers submitted in the Final Honour Examination, was to request a separate English First Public Examination. A committee which included Tolkien suggested that this should include papers on English History; Old English and Chaucer; Greek or Latin set books; books to be prescribed by the same board; and unprepared translation from not fewer than two nor more than three languages (Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, Spanish). Although the request for a separate examination was refused, in 1930 a paper in Old English and one on English History and Literature from 1603 to 1688 were added to the existing Pass Moderations.
By then the division of the course of study into a Language side (which attracted about ten per cent of the students) and a Literature side was not working as well as hoped, and Tolkien was the leading force in working for a change in the syllabus which would provide a greater choice. He put forward various suggestions to this end to the English Faculty Board in February 1930, and promoted them in his article *The Oxford English School, published in the Oxford Magazine for 29 May 1930. In the latter he noted that ‘owing to the accidents of history, the distinction between philology and literature is notoriously marked’. He thought the titles ‘language’ and ‘literature’ loosely used to define these were inaccurate, and ‘A and B would be preferable’. He pointed out that
in current use ‘language,’ A, must, if one refers to what is studied under that head, mean (i) anything concerned with English letters before A.D. 1300 – whether literary, historical, critical or linguistic; and (ii) exclusively one thing after 1400, linguistic history. The fourteenth century remains an awkward moment in our national history. On the other hand, ‘literature,’ B, would appear to mean (i) a cursory, sometimes reluctant, notice of the first six hundred years of recorded English – so cursory in fact that it must perforce be either almost entirely linguistic or deplorably inaccurate; and (ii) a purely ‘literary’ – perhaps best defined as a ‘consciously non-linguistic’ – interest in the remaining centuries, or some of them. This is further modified by a required, but seldom achieved, knowledge of the outlines of the history of the English language during twelve centuries, an enormous field as intricate at least as the whole history of the literature, examined in one paper ….
The ‘literature’ student may learn a little Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, but it is precisely at the point of his linguistic effort that his literary effort is least or absent. He is not allowed by the regulations to take a paper in literature up to 1300, even if he wishes to. That is a ‘language’ subject. (On the other hand, a real study of the history of the modern language is [compulsory for] the ‘language,’ A, student, who is scarcely required to study any ‘books’ in the modern period.
The divergence of interests is such that no one person can be expected to deal adequately with both of the ‘sub-schools’. [pp. 778–9]
Tolkien suggested for B that the literature of the nineteenth century should be replaced by ‘a scholarly study of worthy Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English texts, with a paper of unseen translation, for the extracts and the meagre “philology”’, though nineteenth-century literature might be an additional subject. For A he suggested that the history of the language from 1400 to 1900 be abandoned, pointing out that
philology goes hand in hand with as full a study from all points of view of the old and mediæval periods as is possible in two years. The centre of the curriculum is actually Anglo-Saxon and parts of Middle English; while the place occupied by the additional cognate language or languages is probably increasing, and rightly so. Among the latter Old Icelandic is naturally and deservedly most prominent. [p. 779]
He admitted that few first-class Anglo-Saxon texts survive, and among the advantages of studying Old Icelandic was the language’s ‘philological value of an intimate relationship with English’ and its ‘literary and historical value of the highest rank’ (p. 779). In support of Gothic, he said that it ‘introduces its student to many diverse things, the textual history of the Gospels, Greek, the history of Italy, and of north-eastern Europe, and the background of Gothic legend and tradition which was a main source of the poetic inspiration of ancient England and the North’ (pp. 779–80).
After discussion and negotiations during English Faculty Board meetings in 1931, significant changes were made in the syllabus, which was first examined in 1933. This allowed candidates more choice in the nine papers to be taken, with basically three main areas of study. Candidates who wished to do so could also take a tenth paper. Here we describe this syllabus in detail, since with minor changes it remained in force for most of Tolkien’s working life at Oxford, and it expresses his ideas of what English studies should cover.
SYLLABUS
Course I was for those whose interest was mainly in Medieval Philology, but also covered Literature in the period up to Chaucer. Students took papers on Old English Philology; Middle English Philology; Old English Texts – Beowulf, The Fight at Finnesburg (*Finn and Hengest), Deor’s Lament, and Exodus (*The Old English Exodus); Old English Literature; Middle English Texts – The Owl and the Nightingale, Sawles Warde (*Katherine Group), Havelok, *Sir Orfeo, and *Pearl; Middle English Literature; Chaucer, Langland, and Gower; and had a choice of two papers, each devoted to a subsidiary language: Gothic, Old Saxon, Old High German, Middle High German, Old Norse and Old Norse Texts (two papers), or Old French and Old French Texts (two papers). Candidates wanting to offer a tenth paper could
