J.R.R. Tolkien studied Beowulf in his famous 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture argued that Beowulf should be valued as a carefully made poem, rather than treated mainly as a source of historical information about Anglo-Saxon life. Tolkien emphasized the artistic importance of the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon.
The lecture was first delivered at the British Academy on 25 November 1936 and published in 1937. It became one of the most influential modern essays on Beowulf, helping redirect scholarly attention toward the poem’s structure, symbolism, and literary power.
Tolkien’s interest in Beowulf also reached his fiction. He translated and adapted elements of Germanic heroic tradition, though Middle-earth is not a direct retelling of the poem. Beowulf itself is an Old English epic about a hero who fights monsters and later faces a dragon as an aged king.