Pageau: The Monsters and the Cynics

Orthodox Engagement

In his 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," J. R. R. Tolkien refuted the prevailing Beowulf scholarship of his day, which disdained the poem for its focus on monsters. He had this to say about the Old English epic: “I would suggest, then, that the monsters are not an inexplicable blunder of taste; they are essential, fundamentally allied to the underlying ideas of the poem, which give it its lofty tone and high seriousness.” Fr. Andrew sits down with Jonathan Pageau in his Montreal home to discuss whether and how the monsters make sense of our world today, what they have to do with the Christian story, as well as the place of the hero in facing the monsters.