A review by gloriasun
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien

4.0

Uh. I understood about half of this lecture. I'll come back after I've mastered Old English and read The Aeneid. But I feel like I definitely have a deeper appreciation of the work as "an echo of an echo". I found it pretty illuminating that Tolkien argued that "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." And he got to the heart of myth itself; "myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected." Fascinating, and brilliant.