What is the name of Tolkien’s 1936 lecture about Beowulf criticism?

Tolkien’s 1936 lecture about Beowulf criticism is titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in 1936. He argued that scholars had placed too much emphasis on using Beowulf as evidence for Germanic history, language, or archaeology and had not paid enough attention to the poem as a work of art.

The lecture defended the importance of the monsters, especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. Tolkien maintained that they were central to the poem’s design rather than embarrassing distractions from a supposedly more valuable historical core.

The essay became one of the most influential modern discussions of Beowulf. It also illustrates Tolkien’s method as a scholar: he combined philology with close literary reading. The title is sometimes shortened informally to “The Monsters and the Critics,” but the full published title begins with “Beowulf.”