What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture on heroic literature?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. He argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of imaginative literature rather than treated mainly as a historical source or a linguistic document. His argument helped redirect modern scholarship toward the poem’s structure, imagery, and themes.

The lecture defended the importance of the monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon. Tolkien maintained that they were not embarrassing distractions from the poem’s serious material; instead, they were central to its design and meaning.

The essay became one of the most influential works of Beowulf criticism in English. It also helps explain why Tolkien’s own fiction gives dragons, monsters, and heroic struggles such prominent roles. The lecture’s title is sometimes shortened informally, but its canonical title includes both “The Monsters” and “the Critics.”