The Monsters and the Critics

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The Monsters and the Critics
Dustwrapper of first edition
Author	J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien
Country	United Kingdom, United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Literature, Essays
Publisher	George Allen & Unwin, Houghton Mifflin
Publication date	1983
ISBN	0-0480-9019-0

The Monsters and the Critics is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's scholarly linguistic essays edited by his son Christopher and published posthumously in 1983.

The essays are:

"Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics" looks at Beowulf.
"On Translating Beowulf" looks at translating Anglo-Saxon.
"On Fairy-Stories," the 1939 Andrew Lang lecture at St Andew's University, is a defence of the fantasy genre.
"A Secret Vice" talks about creating imaginary languages, giving background to Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin.
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a study of the medieval poem of the same name.
"English and Welsh," the inaugural O'Donnell Memorial Lecture (1955), is a survey of the historical relationship between the two tongues, including an analysis of the word Welsh.
"Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford", given upon his retirement in 1959.

[edit] External links

The Monsters and the Critics publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

v • d • e J. R. R. Tolkien

Bibliography

Fiction	Songs for the Philologists (1936) • The Hobbit or There and Back Again (1937) • Leaf by Niggle (1945) • The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (1945) • Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) • The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son (1953) • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954), The Return of the King (1955) • The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book (1962) • The Road Goes Ever On (1967) • Tree and Leaf (1964) • The Tolkien Reader (1966) • Smith of Wootton Major (1967)

Posthumous Fiction	The Father Christmas Letters (1976) • The Silmarillion (1977) • Unfinished Tales (1980) • Bilbo's Last Song (1990) • The History of Middle-earth (12 Volumes) (1983–1996) • Roverandom (1998) • The Children of Húrin (2007) • The History of The Hobbit (2007)

Academic	A Middle English Vocabulary (1922) • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English text, 1925) • Some Contributions to Middle-English Lexicography (1925) • The Devil's Coach Horses (1925) • Ancrene Wisse and Hali Meiðhad (1929) • The Name 'Nodens' (1932) • Sigelwara Land parts I and II, in Medium Aevum (1932-34) • Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale (1934) • Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics (1936) • The Reeve's Tale: version prepared for recitation at the 'summer diversions' (1939) • On Fairy-Stories (1939) • Sir Orfeo (1944) • Ofermod and Beorhtnoth's Death (1953) • Middle English "Losenger": Sketch of an etymological and semantic enquiry (1953) • Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle (1962) • English and Welsh (1963) • Introduction to Tree and Leaf (1964) • Contributions to the Jerusalem Bible (as translator and lexicographer) (1966) • Tolkien on Tolkien (autobiographical) (1966)

Posthumous Academic	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Modern English translations, 1975) • Finn and Hengest (1982) • The Monsters and the Critics (1983) • Beowulf and the Critics (2002)