J.R.R. Tolkien analyzed Beowulf in his influential lecture “The Monsters and the Critics.” He delivered the lecture at Oxford in 1936, and it was published in 1937.
Tolkien argued that critics had undervalued the poem by treating its monsters as distractions from historical or cultural information. He insisted that Grendel, his mother, and the dragon are central to the poem's design and meaning. The lecture helped redirect modern Beowulf criticism toward the poem as a work of literature.
The essay is important both for Tolkien's academic reputation and for understanding his creative interests. Its focus on myth, monsters, mortality, and heroic courage echoes concerns found in his fiction, but Beowulf itself is an Old English poem, not a Tolkien story.