"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceed
Title page of "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", 1936
Tolkien's essay repeatedly responds to comments by William Paton Ker. Late 19th century portrait by Johnston Forbes-Robertson
First folio of the Beowulf manuscript, c. 975-1025
The poet and Beowulf translator Seamus Heaney praised The Monsters and the Critics.
Beowulf
Videos
Beowulf is an Old English poem, an epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines, contained in the Nowell Codex. It is one of the most important and most often
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics
…Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections. Tolkien argues that the…
Remounted page, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV
The traditional view is that Beowulf was composed for performance, chanted by a scop (left) to string accompaniment, but modern scholars have suggested its origin as a piece of written literature borrowed from oral traditions. Illustration by J. R. Skelton, c. 1910