What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture later published as an influential essay on Old English literature?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture on Old English literature was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. He delivered it as the prestigious British Academy’s 1936 Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, and it was later published as an essay.

The lecture argued that critics should treat Beowulf as a work of imaginative poetry rather than merely as evidence about history, language, or Germanic culture. Tolkien defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its structure and meaning rather than embarrassing distractions from supposedly more serious material.

The essay strongly influenced modern Beowulf scholarship and helped reshape how the poem was taught and read. Tolkien’s argument also reflects his wider belief that mythology and imaginative literature deserved serious academic attention. The lecture is sometimes confused with On Fairy-Stories, another important Tolkien essay, but that later work addresses the nature and uses of fairy stories rather than focusing specifically on Beowulf.