I took that in the reverse direction. Everything I know about early English literature I was inspired to learn because my appetite had been whetted by Tolkien. I even like Beowulf. Who says it's boring? It's far less boring than many a Victorian three-decker. In fact, I like Beowulf enough that I did this.

My colleague in Tolkien studies, Michael Drout, who's also an Anglo-Saxon scholar, says that half the Anglo-Saxonists currently in practice originally got in interested in the field because they'd read Tolkien's works.