J.R.R. Tolkien studied Beowulf in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy in London on 25 November 1936. He argued that critics should treat the poem as a work of art rather than merely as a historical source or collection of information about Germanic society. His defence of the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, helped reshape modern Beowulf scholarship.
The lecture became one of the most influential twentieth-century essays on Old English literature. Tolkien’s professional expertise in Anglo-Saxon language and poetry also influenced his fiction. Readers often connect Beowulf’s dragon, treasure hoard, heroic atmosphere, and monster-filled world with elements of The Hobbit, though the two works are separate texts.