What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that transformed modern Beowulf criticism?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. It argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of poetry rather than treated merely as historical evidence about Anglo-Saxon society, language, or archaeology.

A central part of Tolkien’s argument was that the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, are not embarrassing distractions from its serious subject. They are essential to its structure and meaning. The lecture helped redirect Beowulf scholarship toward literary interpretation and remains one of Tolkien’s most influential academic works.

The lecture is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s essay ‘On Fairy-Stories,’ another important work of literary criticism. ‘The Monsters and the Critics’ is specifically about Beowulf and was first published in 1937. Its influence extended far beyond Tolkien studies, shaping how later readers approached Old English literature.