What is the title of Tolkien’s famous 1936 lecture about Beowulf’s monsters and critical reception?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936, and it was published in 1937. He argued that Beowulf should be valued as a coherent work of art rather than treated mainly as a source of historical information about Anglo-Saxon society.

A central part of his argument was that the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, are not embarrassing distractions. They are essential to its structure and meaning, giving the poem its distinctive balance between heroic achievement and mortality.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. It also shows how Tolkien’s scholarship and creative writing were connected: his understanding of myth, monsters, language, and heroic tragedy informed both his academic criticism and the stories of Middle-earth.