The Monsters and the Critics

In 'The Monsters and the Critics' J.R.R. Tolkien discuses many arguments against previous criticisms of Beowulf. Tolkien proposes a few critiques of Beowulf, the major ones being that we should look at Beowulf as nothing more than a piece of literature; and that the monsters are just monsters and don't have any deeper meanings. 

            Most critics before Tolkien analyzed Beowulf as an historical account of Anglo-Saxon living. Tolkien states that "Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art." If we were to read Beowulf as a poem and nothing more, we could appreciate its poetic individuality. Acknowledging that Beowulf might not be the greatest epic, Tolkien argues that the structure, literary elements and devices used, and the writer's ability to create believable characters, should be the main focus of critics. He also accepts the fact that Beowulf is a legend and was not intended to be an epic. Tolkien comments that the overall effect of Beowulf on the reader is that, "Beowulf is more beautiful, that each line there is more significant than in the other long Old English poems."

He also argued that the monsters, Grendel, his mother, and the dragon, are nothing more than monsters. Many critics disregard the monsters as childish flaws or bad mistakes. Tolkien recognizes the monsters for what they are, part of the story plot. If it weren't for the monsters, Beowulf wouldn't grow as a character. In the society in which Beowulf is written, you achieve greatness by killing monsters. The more monsters you kill, the more your name is known around the world. For instance, in Beowulf, when he is king, no other country dares to attack Geatland because Beowulf was a fierce warrior, but once he dies, Geatland is ambushed and taken over. Had Beowulf not been lead by his ego to defeat the monsters, he may never have been King of Geatland.

I personally believe that though slightly confusing, Tolkien’s essay was excellent. The points that he gets across opened my eyes to a new way to view Beowulf. I wasn’t critiquing Beowulf as a historical document or an epic; I had just been analyzing it for dialectical journals. But the second time I read Beowulf, I learned to appreciate it as a great piece of literature which is indeed “worth studying”.