What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lecture that introduced the “monster” view of Beowulf?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy in 1936. He argued that scholars had focused too heavily on using Beowulf as evidence about Germanic history, archaeology, and language while neglecting the poem’s artistic structure and imaginative power.

His central argument was that the monsters were not embarrassing distractions from the poem’s serious historical content. Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon were essential to Beowulf’s design because they gave its themes of courage, mortality, and inevitable defeat their dramatic form.

The essay became one of the most influential works of modern Beowulf criticism. It helped shift attention toward the poem as literature rather than merely as a historical source. Tolkien’s own translations and teaching also contributed substantially to the modern study of Old English literature.