What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that influenced his fantasy writing?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford in 1936. He argued that Beowulf should be appreciated as a unified work of literature rather than treated mainly as a source of historical information about Anglo-Saxon society. He defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its artistic structure.

The lecture became one of the most important modern works of Beowulf criticism. It helped change how scholars approached the poem and demonstrated Tolkien’s belief that mythic and imaginative elements could carry serious literary meaning.

The lecture also helps explain Tolkien’s creative interests, but it was not a novel or a Middle-earth story. Another famous Tolkien essay, “On Fairy-Stories,” addresses fantasy and myth more directly and was published in a collection after the lecture.