What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that transformed Beowulf scholarship?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the British Academy’s Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture. He argued that Beowulf should be treated as a unified work of art, rather than merely as evidence for reconstructing Germanic history or language. His defense of the poem’s monsters became the lecture’s defining feature.

Earlier scholars often treated Grendel, his mother, and the dragon as embarrassing or secondary elements. Tolkien argued that these beings were central to the poem’s structure and meaning. The lecture therefore helped redirect Beowulf studies toward literary interpretation.

The essay was published in 1937 and remains one of Tolkien’s most influential academic works. It is not the same text as “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien’s later essay about fantasy, imagination, and literary creation.