What is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that transformed modern views of Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that transformed modern views of Beowulf was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the British Academy’s prestigious Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture on 25 November 1936. It challenged approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as a historical document or as a flawed collection of folklore. Tolkien argued that the poem should be understood as a work of art, with its monsters—especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon—at the center of its design rather than as embarrassing distractions.

The lecture was published in the Proceedings of the British Academy in 1937 and became one of the most influential pieces of modern Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien’s argument helped redirect attention toward the poem’s structure, symbolism, and imagination. The essay is sometimes confused with On Fairy-Stories, another major Tolkien lecture and essay, but the two works address different subjects: Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics focuses on the Old English epic, while On Fairy-Stories examines the nature and purposes of fairy stories.