Which academic journal published J.R.R. Tolkien’s lecture-essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s lecture-essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics was published in Proceedings of the British Academy.

Tolkien delivered the influential lecture on 25 November 1936, when he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. The British Academy published it in its Proceedings in 1937. The essay challenged scholars who treated Beowulf mainly as a historical or linguistic document rather than as a work of literature.

Tolkien argued that the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, were central to its artistic structure. He maintained that removing those elements misunderstood what the poem was designed to achieve. The lecture helped reshape modern Beowulf criticism and remains one of Tolkien’s most important academic works.

The essay is often confused with Tolkien’s 1936 lecture itself, but the publication appeared the following year. It is also separate from his later fiction and from his translation and commentary on Beowulf.