What is the full title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s influential 1936 lecture on Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936, and it was published in 1937. He argued that critics had focused too heavily on using Beowulf as historical or linguistic evidence and had undervalued its artistic structure.

A central part of Tolkien’s argument was that the monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, are not distractions from the poem’s serious themes. Instead, they help organize its meditation on courage, mortality, and the limits of human achievement.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. It also helps explain why monsters, heroic struggle, and the tension between glory and death became such important elements in Tolkien’s own fiction.