In J.R.R. Tolkien's essay "The Monsters and the Critics" he writes many arguments against previous critiques of Beowulf. Critics before Tolkien focused on the historical aspect of Beowulf, and what we could learn from the history included in the text. The main argument in this essay is that critics should instead focus on Beowulf as a piece of literature, of art, and critique the literary elements and devices used, the structure, and the writer's ability to create believable characters (even though some of the people were real) as they would do with any other literary work. Tolkien claims that Beowulf is "so interesting as poetry, in places poetry so powerful, that this quite overshadows the historical content." Though arguing that Beowulf is not the greatest epic, he claims that it "has its own individual character". He also acknowledges the fact that Beowulf is a legend, just the story of a people, and upon its writing was not intended to be an epic at all. He does comment upon the overall effect of Beowulf on the reader, arguing that "Beowulf is more beautiful, that each line there is more significant than in the other long Old English poems."

I have not yet read Beowulf, but the fact that we have had to read this essay proves that it has some merit at least, and the fact that we must read Beowulf in literature classes proves that this essay did indeed have an effect on scholars and the way that everyone viewed Beowulf. I do agree with Tolkien on many of his points. When we read books (or poems), at least the first few times, we are not usually focused on whether the history is accurate, or whether there is history injected at all. We instead tend to focus on how the writing makes us feel, what the author is trying to say about the characters and the society in which they live, and the overall meaning of the piece. Most fiction has to have some fact from which the story came, but we should not focus on that little piece of fact, those inconsequential bits of history when we are at risk of losing the art of a story.