Beowulf

The great Beowulf scholar J. R. R. Tolkien noted that the name Beowulf almost certainly means bee-wolf in Old English. The name Beowulf is therefore a kenning for "bear" due to a bear's love of honey and to the similarity and not-so-distant kinship between ursines and canines.

J. R. R. Tolkien believed the translation by J. J. Earle was not accurate, and did not convey the meaning and symbolism of the storyline or the beauty of the prose of the poem.

Beowulf exercised an important influence on J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote the landmark essay Beowulf: the monsters and the critics while a professor at Oxford University. Tolkien also translated the poem, which the Tolkien Society has recently decided to publish. Grendel and Grendel's mother were the inspiration for the Orcs in his Ring trilogy (see also the Old English word orcneas, which makes but a single appearance in the poem). Many parallels can also be drawn between Beowulf and The Hobbit.

A turning point in Beowulf scholarship came in 1936 with J. R. R. Tolkien's article Beowulf: the monsters and the critics when for the first time the poem, and Anglo-Saxon literature, was seriously examined for its literary merits—not just scholarship about the origins of the English language as was popular in the 19th century. Perhaps no other single academic article has been so instrumental in converting a medieval piece of literature from obscurity to prominence.