J.R.R. Tolkien examined Beowulf in his famous 1936 lecture The Monsters and the Critics.
Tolkien delivered the lecture at the British Academy in London. He argued that scholars had focused too heavily on using Beowulf as evidence about Germanic history and society while neglecting its artistic structure and poetic power.
His lecture helped redirect modern Beowulf criticism. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s monsters—Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon—not as embarrassing distractions but as central to its design and meaning. The poem’s hero, Beowulf, faces monsters first as a young warrior and later as an aging king.
The lecture became a landmark in Old English studies. Tolkien was also a major translator and teacher of Old English, but The Monsters and the Critics is specifically an influential critical lecture about Beowulf.