J.R.R. Tolkien analysed Beowulf in his influential 1936 lecture and essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The work challenged approaches that treated the poem mainly as a historical document or a source for reconstructing Germanic society. Tolkien argued that its monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, were central to the poem’s artistic design rather than embarrassing distractions.
His argument helped reshape modern Beowulf criticism. Tolkien presented the poem as a balanced composition involving youth, age, courage, mortality and the passage of time. His scholarly reading also helps explain why monsters and heroic conflict became so prominent in his own fiction. Beowulf is an Old English epic about the hero Beowulf, who fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother and, later in life, a dragon.