What is the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lecture on Beowulf first delivered in 1936?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy. He argued that Beowulf should be appreciated as a unified work of art rather than treated mainly as a damaged historical source. In particular, he defended the importance of the poem’s monsters, including Grendel and the dragon, to its structure and meaning.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern essays on Beowulf. It helped redirect scholarly attention toward the poem’s imaginative and literary qualities. Tolkien’s argument also helps explain why mythic creatures mattered so much in his own writing: he saw monsters, courage, mortality, and the limits of human power as central subjects rather than decorative additions.