What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien's first published academic essay on Beowulf?

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics was J.R.R. Tolkien's influential academic essay on the Old English poem Beowulf. He delivered it as a lecture at the British Academy in 1936, and it was published the same year.

Before Tolkien's intervention, some scholars had treated Beowulf mainly as evidence for Germanic history, language, or folklore. Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art. He defended its structure and emphasized the importance of its monsters, especially Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon, rather than dismissing them as irrelevant material.

The essay changed the direction of Beowulf criticism and remains one of Tolkien's most important scholarly works. It is sometimes confused with On Translating Beowulf, a later essay, or with Tolkien's translation of the poem. Tolkien's academic study of Beowulf also influenced the atmosphere of his fiction, although the essay itself is literary scholarship rather than a Middle-earth story.