What was the name of Tolkien’s academic lecture that inspired the modern study of Beowulf?

Tolkien’s influential academic lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. He delivered it as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in 1936.

The lecture argued that critics had often treated Beowulf mainly as historical evidence or as a source for studying Germanic culture. Tolkien instead insisted that the poem should be valued as a work of art, especially for the way its monsters and central themes organize the whole composition.

The lecture became one of the most important twentieth-century contributions to Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien’s reading helped move the poem away from the margins of literary study and encouraged scholars to examine its structure, symbolism, and imaginative power. Beowulf also influenced Tolkien’s fiction, particularly his interest in heroic poetry, dragons, burial mounds, and the tension between courage and mortality.