The dragon (Beowulf) with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn", says that "Beowulf"s dragon acts like "the typical dragon of Old English proverbial lore" because he guards treasure. W. P. Ker criticized the inclusion of Beowulf's fight with the dragon and his subsequent death in the poem, writing "It is as if to the end of the "Odyssey" there had been added some later books telling in full of the old age of Odysseus, far from the sea, and his death at the hands of Telegonus". In "", J. R. R. Tolkien noted that the dragon and Grendel are "constantly
Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics ""Beowulf": The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem "Beowulf". It was first published as a paper in that year in the "Proceedings of the British Academy", and has since been reprinted in many collections. Tolkien argues that the original poem has almost been lost under the weight of the scholarship on it; that "Beowulf" must be seen as a poem, not just as a historical document; and that the quality of its verse and its structure