What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published scholarly essay about Beowulf called?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s influential scholarly lecture about Beowulf was called “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy in 1936. It argued that critics should treat the poem as a unified work of art rather than dismissing its monsters as secondary or unimportant material.

The lecture helped change modern academic attitudes toward Beowulf. Tolkien emphasized the dramatic and imaginative power of the poem’s encounters with Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. He also defended the poem’s structure and the poet’s artistic choices.

The work was first published in the Proceedings of the British Academy in 1937. It remains one of Tolkien’s best-known academic contributions. Although Tolkien wrote many scholarly pieces, this title is especially associated with his argument that the supernatural elements are central to Beowulf rather than embarrassing leftovers from an earlier age.