Which Tolkien essay was based on his 1936 lecture about Beowulf?

Tolkien’s 1936 lecture about Beowulf became the essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Tolkien delivered the lecture at Oxford on 25 November 1936. It challenged approaches that treated Beowulf mainly as a historical document or a source of information about Germanic society. Tolkien argued that the poem should be valued as a work of art with a carefully constructed dramatic design.

The essay defended the importance of the poem’s monsters, especially Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. Tolkien maintained that these figures were not embarrassing distractions from the poem’s serious themes; they were central to its structure and meaning.

The lecture became one of the most influential modern studies of Beowulf. It also helps explain why Tolkien’s own fiction gives dragons, monsters, and heroic confrontations such literary weight rather than treating them as mere decoration.