What is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture later published as an influential essay on Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. It argued that Beowulf should be valued primarily as a work of poetry rather than treated merely as evidence about Germanic history, folklore, or archaeology. Tolkien urged critics to take the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, seriously as central artistic elements.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. Tolkien’s argument helped redirect scholarly attention toward the poem’s structure, tone, symbolism, and literary unity. It also illustrates how his academic interests in Old English connected with his creative writing.

The essay is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s later lecture “On Fairy-Stories,” which discusses fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. “The Monsters and the Critics” is specifically associated with Beowulf and was published in 1937 after its original lecture.