J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture helped revive literary interest in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.
Tolkien presented “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” as a lecture at the University of Oxford on 25 November 1936. He argued that scholars had paid too much attention to the poem as a historical or linguistic document and not enough attention to its artistic structure.
In particular, Tolkien defended the importance of Beowulf’s monsters, including Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. He treated them as central to the poem’s meaning rather than as distractions from a supposedly more serious historical core.
The lecture became one of the most influential works of modern Beowulf criticism. It helped establish the poem as a major work of literature in its own right. This lecture is distinct from Tolkien’s later translation and scholarly editions of Beowulf, which were published or released separately.