Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics of the hero by accepting Grendel and the dragon." In Tolkien's view, the poem is essentially about a "man at war with the hostile world, and his inevitable overthrow in Time". The underlying tragedy is man's brief mortal life. Grendel and the dragon are identified as enemies of a Christian God, unlike the monsters encountered by Odysseus on his travels. What had happened is that Northern courage, exultant, defiant in the face of inevitable defeat by "Chaos and Unreason" (Tolkien cites Ker's words), fuses with a Christian faith and outlook. The "Beowulf" poet uses both what he knew to be
Beowulf Genesis, the Book of Exodus, and the Book of Daniel in its inclusion of references to the Genesis creation narrative, the story of Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, the Devil, Hell, and the Last Judgment. The poem mixes the West Saxon and Anglian dialects of Old English, though it predominantly uses West Saxon, as do other Old English poems copied at the time. There is a wide array of linguistic forms in the "Beowulf" manuscript. It is this fact that leads some scholars to believe that "Beowulf" has endured a long and complicated transmission through all the main