What title did J.R.R. Tolkien give his influential 1936 lecture on Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture on 25 November 1936 at the University of Oxford. It was later published in 1937 and became one of the most important modern essays on the Old English poem Beowulf.

Earlier scholarship had often treated Beowulf mainly as a historical document or as evidence for Germanic culture. Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art. He emphasized the central importance of its monsters—Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon—and argued that they were not accidental distractions from the poem’s supposedly more serious material.

The essay helped change the direction of Beowulf studies. Tolkien’s interest in monsters, heroic literature, and invented languages also connects his academic work with the themes found in his fiction, though the lecture itself is literary criticism rather than a Middle-earth story.