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 dragon (Beowulf) recounting the Sigurd/Fafnir tale. Nonetheless, comparative contemporary narratives did not have the complexity and distinctive elements written into "Beowulf"'s dragon scene. Beowulf is a hero who previously killed two monsters. The scene includes extended flashbacks to the Geatish-Swedish wars, a detailed description of the dragon and the dragon-hoard, and ends with intricate funerary imagery. "Beowulf" scholar J. R. R. Tolkien considered the dragon in "Beowulf" to be one of only two real dragons in northern European literature, writing of it, "dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare. In