J.R.R. Tolkien studied Beowulf in his famous 1936 lecture.
Tolkien delivered “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” as a lecture in 1936, and it was published as an essay the same year. He argued that the poem’s monsters—especially Grendel and the dragon—were central to its artistic design rather than embarrassing distractions from its historical or linguistic value.
The lecture helped change modern academic approaches to Beowulf. Tolkien emphasized the poem as a work of literature, while also recognizing its importance as an Old English text and a source of cultural information about the Germanic world.
Beowulf also influenced Tolkien’s fiction. Scholars and readers often note parallels involving dragons, heroic treasure, ancient swords, and cursed objects, although Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories are not simple retellings of the poem. The Battle of Maldon and other Old English poems were important to Tolkien too, but they were not the title subject of this 1936 lecture.