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 wrote that the "epoch-making paper" stood out in considering "Beowulf" as literature. Heaney argued that Tolkien "took for granted the poem's integrity and distinction as a work of art", and showed how the poem achieved that status: Heaney called the paper's literary treatment "brilliant". He suggested that it had changed the way that "Beowulf" was valued, and that it had started "a new era of appreciation" of the poem. Tolkien's own translation of "Beowulf", published posthumously in 2014 as "", has been linked to the essay. Shippey has argued that the translation throws light on "what Tolkien really thought in