What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first academic lecture title on Beowulf, delivered in 1936?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the University of Oxford on 25 November 1936. It challenged the tendency of scholars to treat Beowulf mainly as evidence for history, language, or Germanic culture while dismissing its monsters as childish or secondary. Tolkien argued that Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon were central to the poem’s design.

The lecture helped redirect modern Beowulf criticism. Tolkien presented the poem as a work of art whose structure and symbolism deserved close attention, not merely as a damaged historical document. His account of the poem’s balance between youth and age, life and death, and heroic action and inevitable loss became highly influential.

The essay was published in 1937 and remains one of Tolkien’s best-known scholarly works. It is separate from On Fairy-Stories, another important Tolkien lecture and essay, which developed his ideas about fantasy, escape, recovery, and consolation.