What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s academic lecture that reshaped Beowulf studies in 1936?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936. He argued that scholars had paid too much attention to historical clues and individual details in Beowulf while neglecting the poem’s artistic unity. Tolkien defended the importance of its monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to the poem’s design rather than as distractions from its historical content.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern essays on Beowulf. It helped encourage literary readings of the poem and drew attention to its structure, themes, and imaginative power.

Tolkien’s essay On Fairy-Stories is a separate work, first delivered as a lecture in 1938. English and Welsh is also a different linguistic essay, so neither title answers this question.