Beowulf inspired J.R.R. Tolkien’s treatment of the fictional monster Grendel. Beowulf is an Old English heroic poem in which the warrior Beowulf fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and later a dragon.
Tolkien was a major scholar of Beowulf and argued that its monsters were central to the poem’s artistic structure. His 1936 lecture and essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” helped change how scholars evaluated the poem, encouraging attention to its literary design rather than treating it mainly as a historical document.
Grendel is not a Tolkien invention, although Tolkien created many original monsters and creatures elsewhere. The Old English poem also influenced his engagement with heroic legend, dragons, exile, and the tension between human achievement and mortality. Tolkien’s 1920s translation of Beowulf was published posthumously in 2014.