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

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936, and it was published in 1937. At the time, many scholars treated the Old English poem primarily as a source of historical or linguistic information. Tolkien argued that its monsters—especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon—were central to the poem’s artistic design rather than embarrassing distractions.

The lecture helped redirect Beowulf scholarship toward literary interpretation. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s structure, its balance between youth and age, and its meditation on mortality. His argument also influenced later fantasy writers and critics by defending the seriousness of imaginative literature. The title is sometimes shortened informally to “The Monsters and the Critics,” but the complete published title begins with Beowulf. Tolkien’s expertise in Old English was grounded in his academic work, and the lecture remains one of his most important non-fiction publications.