What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that changed views 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. He argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of poetry, not treated merely as a historical document or an inconvenient collection of stories about monsters.

His argument redirected attention toward the poem’s artistic structure, symbolism, and central imaginative power. Tolkien emphasized that Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon were not accidental distractions but essential to the poem’s design.

The lecture was published in 1937 and became one of the most influential modern essays on Beowulf. It also shows why Tolkien’s literary scholarship matters when studying his fiction: his understanding of myth, monsters, heroic narratives, and language was both academic and creative. The title is sometimes shortened informally, but the canonical title includes both “The Monsters” and “The Critics.”