What is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture about the monsters and critics of Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. It challenged approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as an imperfect historical document or as a source for reconstructing lost Germanic history. Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art with a coherent imaginative design.

The lecture gave special attention to the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon. Rather than viewing them as embarrassing distractions from supposedly more serious material, Tolkien argued that they are central to the poem’s structure and meaning. His argument strongly influenced later Beowulf scholarship.

The essay is important both for Tolkien’s academic reputation and for understanding his creative work. His respect for monsters, mythic conflict, and the power of old stories also resonates with the themes of his fiction, although the lecture is a work of literary criticism, not a Middle-earth narrative.