Beowulf is the poem J.R.R. Tolkien famously discussed in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.”
The lecture argued that Beowulf should be valued as a work of poetry rather than treated merely as a historical source about Anglo-Saxon society. Tolkien defended the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, as central to its artistic design. His argument helped redirect modern scholarship toward the poem’s structure, themes, and imaginative power.
The lecture became one of Tolkien’s most influential academic works. It also helps explain his lifelong interest in mythic storytelling and heroic literature. Tolkien’s appreciation of Beowulf did not mean that he considered the poem a factual chronicle; rather, he believed its imaginative elements were essential to understanding it. The Old English poem tells of the hero Beowulf, who fights Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and later a dragon. Tolkien’s scholarship and fiction consequently influenced one another without making Beowulf a direct source text for every feature of Middle-earth.