Which 1936 lecture by J.R.R. Tolkien became a major scholarly study of Beowulf?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics became a major scholarly study of Beowulf.

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in 1936. It was published in 1937 and argued that critics should take Beowulf’s monsters seriously as central elements of the poem rather than treating them as distractions from its historical or linguistic evidence.

The lecture helped change modern approaches to the Old English epic. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s artistic structure, its themes of mortality and courage, and the relationship between its human and monstrous elements. His argument influenced generations of Beowulf scholars and remains one of his most frequently cited academic works.

The essay is sometimes confused with Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, which was published much later, after his death, in Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. The 1936 work is a critical lecture and essay, not a complete translation of the poem.