What title did J.R.R. Tolkien give his 1936 lecture about Beowulf criticism?

J.R.R. Tolkien titled his 1936 lecture about Beowulf criticism Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. It challenged scholarly approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as evidence about Germanic history, language, or folklore rather than as a work of art.

He argued that the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, were central to its structure and meaning. In Tolkien’s view, removing the monsters from critical attention was like taking the machinery out of a poem and examining only its historical background.

The lecture was published in 1937 and became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. It helped change the way the Old English poem was read, emphasizing its unity, artistry, and tragic design. Tolkien’s scholarship on Beowulf also influenced his fiction, although the lecture itself is a work of literary criticism rather than a Middle-earth story.