J.R.R. Tolkien studied Beowulf in his influential 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of imaginative poetry, not treated merely as a historical source or a collection of clues about Anglo-Saxon society. Tolkien defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its artistic structure.
His argument helped redirect modern Beowulf criticism. Rather than dismissing the supernatural elements, Tolkien showed how they support the poem’s themes of courage, mortality, and the struggle against overwhelming forces.
Tolkien’s engagement with Beowulf also illustrates the relationship between his scholarship and fiction. His Middle-earth stories were not adaptations of the poem, but his sensitivity to heroic literature, monsters, elegiac loss, and ancient languages informed his creative work. Beowulf itself is an Old English poem about a hero who fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon.