Beowulf was the poem at the center of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture later published as “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” The lecture was delivered at Oxford on 25 November 1936.
Tolkien argued that critics had undervalued the poem by treating its monsters as distractions from its historical or linguistic details. He maintained that Beowulf should be understood as a carefully shaped work of poetry, with its monsters central to its meaning and structure.
The essay became one of the most influential works of modern Beowulf criticism. Tolkien’s scholarship also helped establish his reputation before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings made him famous as a novelist. This question concerns Beowulf specifically; “The Monsters and the Critics” is the title of the lecture and essay, not the title of the Old English poem itself.