Which 1936 lecture by J.R.R. Tolkien became a landmark essay on Old English literature?

Tolkien’s landmark 1936 lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at the University of Oxford in 1936, and it was published in 1937. The essay argued that Beowulf should be appreciated as a work of poetry rather than treated merely as a historical source or a collection of clues about early Germanic society.

He emphasized the artistic importance of the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon. Earlier scholarship had often focused heavily on historical information, while Tolkien insisted that the poem’s structure and imagination deserved serious literary attention.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern critical studies of Beowulf. Tolkien’s expertise in Old English supported his fiction too, but the essay itself is a work of literary criticism, not a retelling of the epic poem.