What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s best-known scholarly lecture on Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s best-known scholarly lecture on Beowulf was Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture in 1936 at the University of Oxford. He argued that earlier scholars had placed too much emphasis on using Beowulf as evidence about Germanic history and society, while undervaluing the poem as a work of imaginative literature.

The lecture defended the importance of Beowulf’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central artistic elements rather than embarrassing distractions. Tolkien’s argument helped influence modern approaches to the poem and became one of the most important works of Beowulf criticism.

The title can be confused with On Fairy-Stories, another famous Tolkien lecture later published as an essay. On Fairy-Stories was delivered in 1939 and discusses fantasy, while Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics focuses on the Old English epic.