J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his famous 1936 scholarly essay about Beowulf.
His lecture, later published as “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art. Earlier scholarship often treated Beowulf mainly as evidence about Germanic history, language, or folklore. Tolkien insisted that its monsters, especially Grendel and the dragon, were central to its meaning rather than distractions from supposedly more serious material.
The essay became highly influential in Beowulf studies and helped change how the poem was taught and interpreted. Tolkien’s expertise in Old English allowed him to discuss its language, structure, imagery, and elegiac themes in detail. His appreciation of heroic poetry also influenced his fiction, although Beowulf is not a direct source for a single Middle-earth character. Tolkien’s essay remains one of the most frequently cited modern works on the poem.