What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that influenced his essay on fantasy literature?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936. It challenged the tendency of earlier scholars to treat Beowulf mainly as historical evidence or as a flawed collection of stories surrounding two monster fights.

Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art. He emphasized the structural importance of its monsters, Grendel and the dragon, and described the poem as a balanced construction whose themes include mortality, courage, and the tension between human achievement and inevitable ruin.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern works of Beowulf criticism. Tolkien’s ideas about myth, monsters, and imaginative literature also connect with his later essay “On Fairy-Stories,” though the two works are separate publications.