What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that reshaped critical discussion of Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture was titled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” He delivered it at the British Academy on 25 November 1936, and it was published the following year.

The lecture argued that critics should treat Beowulf as a unified work of art rather than mainly as evidence about Germanic history, folklore, or language. Tolkien defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its design rather than embarrassing distractions from a supposedly more valuable historical core.

The essay became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. Its argument helped encourage later scholars to examine the poem’s structure, symbolism, tone, and imaginative power. Tolkien’s expertise in Old English was matched by his ability to explain why the poem still mattered as literature.