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He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford. It was written by a Christian poet, looking back reflectively on a time already in his people's distant past. The tale is told in a roundabout way with many digressions into history and legend, and with a constant elegiac tone, ending in a dirge. He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel who was ravaging the land he dies saving his people from a dragon. Tolkien's Riders of Rohan are distinctively Old English, and he has made use of multiple elements of Beowulf in creating them, including their language, culture, and poetry.īeowulf is a long poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero. Both his trolls and Gollum share attributes with Grendel, while Smaug's characteristics closely match those of the Beowulf dragon. Scholars have compared some of Tolkien's monsters to those in Beowulf. The werebear Beorn in The Hobbit has been likened to the hero Beowulf himself both names mean "bear" and both characters have enormous strength. The names of races, including ents, orcs, and elves, and placenames such as Orthanc and Meduseld, derive from Beowulf. He worked to echo the symbolism of life's road and individual heroism in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien admired the way that Beowulf, written by a Christian looking back at a pagan past, embodied a "large symbolism" without ever becoming allegorical. He emulated its style, creating an impression of depth and adopting an elegiac tone. He used elements such as names, monsters, and the structure of society in a heroic age. Tolkien, a fantasy author and professional philologist, drew on the Old English poem Beowulf for multiple aspects of his Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien's use of the Old English poem Beowulf in his Middle-earth fiction