Beowulf is the Old English poem discussed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s influential 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
Tolkien argued that scholars should take the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, seriously as central artistic elements rather than treating them as distractions from historical information. The lecture helped change the direction of Beowulf criticism by emphasizing the poem’s structure, themes, and imaginative power.
Beowulf is an anonymous heroic poem preserved in Old English. Its surviving manuscript is generally dated to around the year 1000, although the poem itself was composed earlier. It tells of the hero Beowulf’s battles with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon.
Tolkien’s scholarship on Beowulf also influenced his fiction. His interest in monsters, heroic courage, ancient languages, and doomed kingdoms can be felt throughout The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, though Beowulf is not a direct source for any single Tolkien character.