J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture famously helped revive scholarly appreciation of Beowulf as a work of literature.
In “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien argued that scholars should take the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, seriously as central elements rather than treating them as distractions from historical information. He emphasized the poem’s artistic structure, symbolism, and tragic vision.
Beowulf is an Old English heroic poem about a warrior who fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a dragon. The surviving manuscript dates from around the year 1000, although the poem itself is older and was composed in the language of Anglo-Saxon England.
Tolkien did not write Beowulf, translate the original poem in this lecture, or discover the manuscript. His importance lies in changing the direction of criticism. The essay became one of the most influential modern studies of the poem and of Old English literature.