Beowulf was the Old English epic poem at the center of J.R.R. Tolkien’s influential 1936 lecture.
Tolkien delivered the lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” in 1936. He argued that scholars should take the poem’s monsters and literary structure seriously instead of treating it mainly as a source of historical information about Germanic society.
The lecture became one of the most important modern works of Beowulf criticism. Tolkien presented the poem as a unified work of art, emphasizing the relationship between its two major monster fights and its meditation on courage, mortality, and loss.
Tolkien’s engagement with Beowulf also influenced his fiction. He translated and taught Old English, and the poem’s atmosphere, heroic themes, and dragon imagery resonate with parts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Wanderer and The Seafarer are separate Old English poems.