Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics most important article ever written about the poem. Scholars of Anglo-Saxon agree that the work was influential, transforming the study of "Beowulf". J. R. R. Tolkien's essay ""Beowulf": The Monsters and the Critics", initially delivered as a lecture in 1936, is regarded as a formative work in modern "Beowulf" studies. In it, Tolkien speaks against critics who play down the monsters in the poem, namely Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon, in favour of using "Beowulf" solely as a source for Anglo-Saxon history. Tolkien argues that rather than being merely extraneous, these elements are key to the narrative and should
The Old English Baron Old Bailey would make a more interesting story." The Old English Baron The Old English Baron is an early Gothic novel by the English author Clara Reeve. It was first published under this title in 1778, although it had anonymously appeared in 1777 under its original name of "The Champion of Virtue", before Samuel Richardson's daughter, Mrs Bridgen, had edited it for her. Apart from typographical errors, the revision was trifling. Miss Reeve noted in the 1778 preface that "This Story is the literary offspring of "The Castle of Otranto", written upon the same plan, with a design to unite