“J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Beowulf’: The Monsters and the Critics’ is the single most important critical essay ever written about        Beowulf…Delivered as a British Academy lecture and published in 1936…[it] is a watershed, an origin, a turning point…[It begins] the study of the poem and its workings as legitimate in their own right, as something worth studying to see how it worked rather than simply comparing it (unfavorably) with other literature” (Drout 1).  Due to Tolkien’s analysis of Beowulf, critics and students of literature from the Middle Ages now evaluate the work from aesthetic guidelines Tolkien located in the text; he paved the road to the use of formalist principles and directed the reader’s attention to the poem’s larger structure and universal message.  While Tolkien’s analysis of Beowulf appears to have “New Critical sentiments…its focus on etymology and philology (particularly in ‘Critics’) does not in fact fit into any particular school…[however] Tolkien did indeed open the door to New Critical readings of the poem” (Drout 21).

Tolkien protested the critic’s attack on the aesthetic value of Beowulf, their negation of its poetic value and intelligence of the author.  He maintained that  “It is plainly only in the consideration of Beowulf as a poem, with an inherent poetic significance, that any view or conviction can be reached or steadily held” about the work (Fry 12).  The critics demeaning statements regarding the intelligence and ability of Beowulf’s author and the overall merit of the work prompted Tolkien to respond: “The high tone, the sense of dignity, alone is evidence in Beowulf of the presence of a mind lofty and thoughtful.  It is, one would have said, improbable that such a man would write more than three thousand lines (wrought to a high finish) on matter that is really not worth serious attention: that remains thin and cheap when he has finished with it” (Fry 17).  The text appeared as anything but thin and cheap in Tolkien’s eyes; he credited it with true beauty.

Tolkien believed that the beauty of Beowulf resulted because “its author, coming in a time rich in the legends of heroic men, has used them afresh in an original fashion, giving us not just one more, but something akin yet different: a measure and interpretation of them all” (Fry 21).  In Tolkien’s opinion, the poem stands unique because it doesn’t just provide one more average legend to add to a long list.In defense of the form of Beowulf, Tolkien illustrated its recurring flashbacks constituted an important part of that form: “As the poet looks back into the past, surveying the history of kings and warriors in the old traditions, he sees that all glory (or as we might say ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’) ends in night” (Fry 28).  This recurring theme directs the discerning observer’s thoughts to the larger structure and the purpose of the larger than life foes.

Tolkien said, “It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant than this imaginary poem of a great king’s fall.  It glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important.  At the beginning, and during its process, and most of all at the end, we look down as if from a visionary height upon the house of man in the valley of the world.  A light starts—lixte se leoma ofer landa fela [that light shined over many lands]—and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voices to cease.  Grendel is maddened by the sound of harps (Fry 40).

According to Tolkien, the poet of Beowulf was “rehandling in a new perspective an ancient theme: that man, each man and all men, and all their works shall die” (Fry 28).  The treasure of Beowulf lies in its universal song and all men owe Tolkien a debt of gratitude for opening its music to the world and opening our eyes to the beauty found in the literature of the Middle Ages.