What 1936 lecture by J.R.R. Tolkien became a landmark essay on Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture on Beowulf was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the University of Oxford on 25 November 1936. It challenged approaches that treated the poem mainly as a historical source or as a collection of secondary details.

Instead, Tolkien argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of art. He emphasized the central roles of the monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, and described the poem as balanced around a “marked contrast” between youth and age.

The lecture was published in 1937 and had a major influence on modern Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien’s expertise in Old English literature also shaped his fiction, whose languages, heroic traditions, and legendary structures reflect his academic interests.