J.R.R. Tolkien lectured on and wrote extensively about the Old English epic Beowulf.
His 1936 lecture and essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” became one of the most influential modern works of Beowulf scholarship. Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art, not treated merely as evidence about Germanic history or language.
He emphasized the importance of the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, and examined how the poem’s structure and themes create meaning. This approach helped redirect academic attention toward Beowulf’s literary qualities.
Tolkien’s expertise in Old English also influenced his creative writing. Beowulf’s heroic world, language, monsters, and treatment of courage and mortality formed part of the intellectual background to his fiction. However, Beowulf is an Anglo-Saxon poem, not a story Tolkien wrote, and it is distinct from his invented histories of Middle-earth.