What was J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published scholarly work on Beowulf called?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s major published lecture on Beowulf was called Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the British Academy’s Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture in 1936. It challenged approaches that treated the poem mainly as historical evidence and argued that its monsters were central to its artistic design.

The lecture helped change modern Beowulf criticism. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s structure, symbolism, and balance between youthful heroism and the tragedy of old age. His argument also defended the poem as a work of literature rather than a damaged collection of folklore.

The title is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s translation and commentary on Beowulf, which was published posthumously in 2014 as Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. The 1936 lecture is the famous critical essay that influenced generations of medievalists.