The dragon (Beowulf) His Lair in "Beowulf"" that the fight between Beowulf and the dragon tends to receive less critical attention than other portions of the poem, commenting that "Grendel and his dam have, as it were, become more beloved of the commentators". Conversely, Kemp Malone writes in "The Kenning in "Beowulf"" that Beowulf's fight with the dragon receives much critical attention, but that commentators fail to note that "the dragon was no fighter. Not that it refused to fight when challenged, but that it did not seek out Beowulf or anyone else. It left Beowulf to do the seeking out". In his
The dragon (Beowulf) monster than a symbol." In "From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy", Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara argue that the "Beowulf" poet added the figure of the dragon to "the pot...that is ladeled out of by most modern fantasy writers"; they argued that both numerous works with villainous dragons, as well as literature with benign dragons like the "My Father's Dragon" books and the "Pern" series by Anne McCaffrey, were influenced by "Beowulf"s dragon. Dickerson and O'Hara further elaborated that through its dragon, "Beowulf" turned the "notion of having a monstrous evil (and not mere human