J.R.R. Tolkien analyzed the Old English poem Beowulf in his 1936 lecture and essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture was delivered at Oxford in 1936 and published as an essay the same year. Tolkien argued that scholars had undervalued the poem’s monsters and had focused too heavily on using it as evidence for history, language, or Germanic customs.
He presented Beowulf as a work of art with a coherent structure, emphasizing the contrast between the hero’s two major fights: against Grendel and his mother in youth, and against the dragon in old age. Tolkien’s defense helped influence later literary criticism of the poem.
Tolkien was also a leading Old English scholar and translated Beowulf. His academic engagement with the poem was separate from his fiction, although readers often notice thematic similarities between Beowulf’s dragon and Tolkien’s interest in heroic legend.