Which 1936 Tolkien essay is a major modern study of the Old English poem Beowulf?

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics is Tolkien’s major 1936 essay on the Old English poem Beowulf.

Tolkien first delivered the work as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in 1936. He argued that critics had focused too heavily on historical sources and linguistic details while undervaluing the poem’s artistic structure. In particular, he defended the importance of Beowulf’s monsters to the poem’s meaning and design.

The essay helped change the direction of Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien treated the poem as a work of literature rather than merely as evidence for earlier myths or Germanic history. His argument that the poem should be judged as a unified artistic creation became highly influential.

The essay also helps explain why dragons, monsters, and heroic memory mattered so much in Tolkien’s own fiction. It is not a retelling of Beowulf, but a scholarly interpretation of the poem’s literary achievement.