The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Volume 1: Chronology. Christina Scull

April 1913 Honour Moderations results are issued; they will be published in The Times on 8 April (p. 6). Tolkien’s name is in the Second Class.

      15 April 1913 L.R. Farnell becomes Rector of Exeter College.

      17 April 1913 Honour Moderations results are published in the Oxford University Gazette. In the same issue Tolkien is listed as a student in both English Language and Literature and Medieval and Modern European Languages and Literature other than English.

      Over the next seven terms Tolkien will need to become familiar with a range of literary and philological subjects and set texts as prescribed in the Oxford Regulations of the Board of Studies, knowing that he may be examined on them in ten papers at the end of Trinity Term 1915:

      Old English texts, especially Beowulf, The Fight at Finnesburg, Deor’s Complaint, the Wife’s Complaint, Waldere, The Ruin, The First Riddle, the Old English Exodus, Elene, Gregory’s Dialogues bks. 1 and 2 (MSS. C and O), and selections 1–34 from the Anglo-Saxon Reader, 8th edn., ed. Henry Sweet. The latter comprises ‘Cynewulf and Cyneheard’ from the Saxon Chronicle; ‘On the State of Learning in England’ from King Alfred’s preface to the West-Saxon version of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis (Pastoral Care); Chapter 21 of Alfred’s translation of the Cura Pastoralis; ‘The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan’ and ‘The Amazons (I, 10)’ from Alfred’s version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius; ‘The Battle of Ashdown’, ‘Alfred and Godrum’, and ‘Alfred’s Wars with the Danes’ from the Saxon Chronicle; a selection from Alfred’s translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae by Boethius; ‘Account of the Poet Caedmon’ from Alfred’s translation of the Ecclesiastical History by the Venerable Bede; extracts from the Laws of Ine; a selection of charters; two homilies by Ælfric, ‘The Assumption of St John the Apostle’ and ‘The Nativity of the Innocents’; the ‘Life of King Oswald’ from Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints; Wulfstan’s address to the English, a homily; ‘The Martyrdom of Ælfeah’ and ‘Eustace at Dover, and the Outlawry of Godwine’ from the Saxon Chronicle; a selection of charms; ‘Beowulf and Grendel’s Mother’ from Beowulf; The Battle of Maldon; The Fall of the Angels, a biblical poem once attributed to Caedmon; Judith; ‘The Happy Land’ from The Phœnix; The Dream of the Rood; The Wanderer; a selection of riddles; gnomic verses; The Seafarer; Northumbrian fragments; Mercian hymns; Kentish charters; the Codex Aureus inscription; and a Kentish psalm.

      Middle English texts, especially Havelok; Pearl; The Owl and the Nightingale; The Taill of Rauf Caolyear; selections from Specimens of Early English, Part 1, 2nd edition, nos. 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, and Part II, 4th edn., nos. 1, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, ed. Richard Morris and Walter W. Skeat; and selections from An Old English Miscellany (‘old’ in the sense of ‘early’, not Anglo-Saxon), ed. Richard Morris, pp. 1–138. The selections from Morris and Skeat comprise ‘Jewish and Christian Offerings’ from the Ormulum; ‘Hengist and Horsa’ from Layamon’s Brut; two texts from The Life of St Juliana; ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ and ‘Directions How a Nun Should Live’ from the *Ancrene Riwle; A Good Orison of Our Lady (a short rhyming poem); two Old Kentish sermons, Sermo in Die Epiphaniae and Dominica Secunda post Octavam Epiphaniae; passages in the life of Joseph, from the English version of Genesis and Exodus; two versions of A Moral Ode; King Horn; the Reign of William the Conqueror and the Life of St Dunstan by Robert of Gloucester; ‘The Visit of the Magi’ and ‘The Flight into Egypt’ from Cursor Mundi (Cursur o Werld); sermon on Matthew 24:43 and the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and Credo from the Middle Kentish of Dan Michael of Northgate; extracts from The Pricke of Conscience by Richard Rolle of Hampole; extracts from Piers the Plowman (A text); and extracts from bk. 7 of The Bruce by John Barbour. The selections from An Old English Miscellany comprise a bestiary (‘The Lion’, ‘The Eagle’, ‘The Serpent’, ‘The Ant’, ‘The Hart’, ‘The Fox’, ‘The Spider’, ‘The Whale’, ‘The Elephant’, ‘The Panther’, ‘The Dove’); Old Kentish sermons; and miscellaneous items mainly from Jesus College (Oxford) MS I. Arch. I. 29.

      The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, especially his Troilus and Criseyde, the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’, ‘The Franklin’s Tale’, and ‘The Clerk’s Tale’.

      The works of Shakespeare, especially Love’s Labour’s Lost, Henry IV Part 1 and Part 2, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra.

      The history of English literature in general.

      The history of the English language.

      Gothic and Germanic philology.

      In addition, Tolkien will have to choose a Special Subject on which he will be examined separately. He will choose Scandinavian Philology, which according to the Regulations will have special reference to Icelandic, together with a special study of the Snorra Edda (i.e. the Prose or Younger Edda), Gylfaginning (Chapters 20–54); the Völsunga Saga (Chapters 13–31); Hallfreðar Saga; Þorfinns Saga Karlsefnis; and Hrafnkels Saga.

      20 April 1913 Trinity Full Term begins.

      Trinity Term 1913 *Kenneth Sisam, Professor Napier’s assistant, becomes Tolkien’s tutor. Tolkien will later write: ‘I think I certainly derived from [Sisam] much of the benefit which he attributes to Napier’s example and teaching…. His teaching was, however, spiced with a pungency, humour and practical wisdom which were his own. I owe him a great debt and have not forgotten it…. He taught me not only to read texts, but to study second-hand book catalogues, of which I was not even aware. Some he marked for me’ (letter to Neil Ker, 22 November 1970, Letters, p. 406). During this term Kenneth Sisam gives the following classes: on Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader (prose), on Mondays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 28 April; Elementary Historical Grammar, on Tuesdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 22 April; Havelok, on Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 24 April; and Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader (verse), on Fridays at 10.00 a.m. in the Examination Schools, beginning 25 April. He will give these classes at the same times every term while Tolkien is an undergraduate in the English School, and in one term or another (excepting Michaelmas Term 1914, see below) Tolkien probably attends them all. In Trinity Term 1913 Sisam also gives a class on Morris and Skeat’s Specimens of Early English on Wednesdays at 10.00 in the Examination Schools, beginning 23 April; he will repeat it in Michaelmas Term 1913, Michaelmas Term 1914, and Hilary and Trinity Terms 1915. – Tolkien’s tutor for Scandinavian Philology is *W.A. Craigie, the Taylorian Lecturer in the Scandinavian Languages. During this term Craigie lectures on Scandinavian Philology, with special reference to Old and Middle English, on Tuesdays at 5.00 p.m. in the Taylor Institution, beginning 22 April. Tolkien probably also attends Joseph Wright’s lectures on Gothic Grammar on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12.15 p.m. in the Taylor Institution, from 24 April. – Tolkien already knows some of the relevant texts and a fair amount of Old English and Old Norse. He works much harder than he had at Classics, for he finds the texts more interesting, and he begins to develop a special interest in the dialect of Middle English peculiar to the West Midlands, the area from which his Suffield ancestors came. When he reads the Old English poem Crist with its reference to ‘Earendel’ it strikes resonances that will endure in future writings. – At a meeting of the Exeter College Essay Club, Tolkien shares one of his growing enthusiasms by reading a paper on the Norse sagas. The Stapeldon Magazine for June 1913 will report (p. 276) that

      the reader proved himself an able and enthusiastic champion, and by adopting a somewhat unconventional turn of phrase, suiting admirably with his subject and the quotations with which he ended, he added a spirit and freshness to an already admirable paper. It is therefore no disparagement to say that the quotations were enjoyed perhaps even more than the criticism of the reader. The subsequent discussion revealed a wide cleavage of taste.

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