Beowulf was the medieval poem J.R.R. Tolkien analyzed in his famous 1936 Oxford lecture. The lecture was titled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics and was later published as a landmark essay in Beowulf scholarship.
Tolkien argued that earlier critics had focused too heavily on using the poem as evidence about history, language, or Germanic culture. He maintained that Beowulf should also be judged as a work of art, with its monsters and heroic structure central to its design.
The essay helped redirect critical attention toward the poem’s literary qualities. Tolkien’s reading of the dragon, Grendel, and the poem’s balance between youth and old age also resonates with themes found in his own fiction. His academic interest in Old English was therefore closely connected to the imaginative methods behind Middle-earth.