J.R.R. Tolkien famously wrote about Beowulf in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture argued that scholars should take the poem’s monsters seriously as central artistic elements rather than treating them as distractions from historical information. Tolkien’s approach helped change the direction of Beowulf criticism.
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem about a hero who fights the monster Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and later a dragon. The surviving manuscript dates from around the early eleventh century, although the poem itself is older and describes a Scandinavian heroic world.
Tolkien’s expertise in Old English influenced his fiction, but Beowulf is not a direct sourcebook for Middle-earth. Similarities such as dragons, heroic courage, and ancient poetry reflect Tolkien’s deep engagement with Germanic legend and language rather than a simple one-to-one adaptation.