What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture about monsters in Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. He delivered it as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in London on 25 November 1936; it was published in 1937, while the title refers to the lecture’s famous critical argument.

Tolkien argued that Beowulf should be appreciated as a work of art rather than treated merely as a historical document or source of linguistic evidence. He emphasized the structural importance of its monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, and challenged critics who dismissed those elements as secondary.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern pieces of Beowulf criticism. It also helps explain why monsters, heroic poetry, and ancient languages mattered so much to Tolkien’s own creative imagination. The lecture title is sometimes incorrectly shortened to “The Monsters and the Critics.”