Beowulf was the medieval poem J.R.R. Tolkien studied in his famous 1936 lecture.
His lecture, titled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” argued that scholars had undervalued the poem’s monsters and imaginative structure. Tolkien said Beowulf should be treated as a work of art rather than merely as evidence for reconstructing Germanic history or society.
The lecture became highly influential in Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien’s interest in the poem also shaped his fiction: the poem’s dragon, heroic conflicts, treasure, and sense of a fading world resonate with themes in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was also a translator and scholar of other medieval works, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but that poem was not the subject of this landmark 1936 lecture.