What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that changed modern readings of Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936. It challenged approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as a source of historical information or as a damaged collection of folklore. Tolkien argued that the poem should be understood as a coherent work of literature.

He gave particular attention to the poem’s monsters, Grendel and the dragon. Rather than seeing them as distracting additions, he maintained that they are essential to Beowulf’s structure and themes, especially the tension between human courage and inevitable defeat.

The lecture was published in 1937 and became one of the most influential works of Beowulf criticism. It is often mentioned alongside Tolkien’s fiction because his scholarship and creative writing were closely connected, but the lecture itself is an academic work about Old English literature.