What was the title of Tolkien’s first major academic essay on Beowulf?

Tolkien’s first major academic essay on Beowulf was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

He delivered the lecture at the British Academy in 1936, and it was published the same year. The essay argued that critics had undervalued the poem by treating it mainly as historical evidence or as a damaged collection of folklore. Tolkien insisted that Beowulf should be read as a coherent work of art.

A central part of his argument was that the monsters—especially Grendel and the dragon—were not embarrassing distractions. They were essential to the poem’s design and to its meditation on courage, mortality, and the human struggle against overwhelming forces.

The essay became one of the most influential pieces of modern Beowulf criticism. It also helps explain why Tolkien’s fiction gives dragons, monsters, and heroic quests such serious literary weight. His scholarly interpretation of Old English literature and his imaginative writing continually informed one another.