Which 1936 lecture by J.R.R. Tolkien helped establish Beowulf as serious literary criticism?

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

He delivered it as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy on 25 November 1936. Tolkien argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of art rather than treated mainly as a historical source or a collection of evidence about Anglo-Saxon life.

The lecture defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its structure and meaning. Tolkien’s approach influenced later Beowulf scholarship and helped shift attention toward the poem’s literary design, themes, and imagination.

The lecture is often confused with On Fairy-Stories, another important Tolkien essay. On Fairy-Stories concerns the nature and function of fantasy, while Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics focuses specifically on the Old English epic Beowulf and the critical methods used to study it.