What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture and essay about the literary importance of Beowulf called?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture and essay about the literary importance of Beowulf was called Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. He first delivered it as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in London.

The essay challenged scholarly approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as evidence for history, folklore, or Germanic culture. Tolkien argued that its monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, were central to the poem’s artistic design rather than distractions from its supposedly more serious material.

The lecture became one of the most influential pieces of modern Beowulf criticism. It helped shift attention toward the poem as a work of literature and influenced generations of medievalists. Tolkien’s argument also helps explain why monsters, moral struggle, and mortality became such important features of his own fiction, although Beowulf is not simply a sourcebook for The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.