Which 1936 Tolkien lecture argued that Beowulf should be valued primarily as a poem?

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

Tolkien delivered the lecture on 25 November 1936 at the University of Oxford. It was later published in 1937 and became one of the most influential modern essays on the Old English epic Beowulf.

Earlier scholars had often treated the poem mainly as historical evidence or as a source for information about Germanic society. Tolkien argued that this approach neglected the poem’s artistic structure. He emphasized the central importance of its monsters, especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon, and defended the poem as a unified work of imagination.

The lecture changed the direction of Beowulf criticism and helped establish Tolkien as a major literary scholar. It also shows the close relationship between his academic interests and his creative writing. The essay is distinct from On Fairy-Stories, another famous Tolkien lecture and essay about fantasy and fairy-story literature.