What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s first published scholarly article on Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s landmark scholarly article on Beowulf was titled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy in 1936, and it was published in the same year. He argued that scholars should take the poem’s monsters seriously as central artistic elements rather than treating them as distractions from historical information.

The lecture helped change the direction of Beowulf criticism. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s structure, symbolism, and literary unity, particularly the relationship between its two major monsters, Grendel and the dragon. His approach influenced generations of scholars and remains one of the most famous essays in Old English studies.

The title is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s translations and other Beowulf-related works. “On Translating Beowulf” is a separate essay connected with his translation, while Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics is the 1936 critical lecture that established his major literary argument.