J.R.R. Tolkien discussed Beowulf in his famous 1936 lecture and essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The essay argued that Beowulf deserved serious literary attention rather than being treated mainly as a source for historical information about Anglo-Saxon life. Tolkien defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as essential to its artistic structure and themes.
His argument influenced modern Beowulf scholarship and helped change how readers understood the poem. Tolkien emphasized the poem’s balance between youth and age, victory and mortality, and heroic action and inevitable loss. His own expertise in Old English deeply informed this interpretation.
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about the hero Beowulf, who fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and later a dragon. Tolkien’s lecture was delivered at Oxford in 1936 and published as an essay in 1937. It is separate from “On Fairy-Stories,” another important Tolkien essay.