Beowulf and the Critics

Summary: The most important essay in the history of Beowulf scholarship, J.R.R. Tolkien's ("Beowulf. The Monsters and the Critics") has, rightly, been much studied and discussed. But scholars of both Beowulf and Tolkien have to this point been unaware that Tolkien's essay was a redaction of a much longer and more substantial work, Beowulf and the Critics, which Tolkien rote in the 1930's and probably delivered as a series of ...Oxford lectures. This critical edition of Beowulf and Critics presents both unpublished versions of Tolkien's lecture ('A and B') each substantially different from the other and from the final, published essay. The edition includes a description of the manuscript, complete textual and explanatory notes, and a detailed critical introduction that explains the place of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon scholarship both in the history of Beowulf scholarship and in literary history. Readers can see what Tolkien really thought about previous Beowulf critics but was too circumspect to publish, and they can also follow the development of Tolkien's thought about Beowulf from rather inchoate impressions to the logical and rhetorical brilliance of the published lecture. [read more]