J.R.R. Tolkien famously reinterpreted Beowulf in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture argued that scholars should pay greater attention to the poem’s artistic structure and its monsters, rather than treating it mainly as a historical source. Tolkien maintained that Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon were essential to the poem’s design and meaning.
The argument helped change modern academic attitudes toward Beowulf. Tolkien presented the poem as a serious work of literature, not merely a collection of folklore or evidence about early Germanic society. The lecture was published in 1937 and became one of the most influential essays in Old English studies.
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about the hero Beowulf and his battles with monstrous enemies. It is not a Tolkien creation, although Tolkien’s scholarship on it influenced his thinking about myth, heroic poetry, dragons, and the relationship between story and language.