Grendel's Titles
Appendix 1 of 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' (1936), which properly requires before us the Old English text of Beowulf alongside Tolkien's translation (and a few other translations for comparison). For what is considered in this appendix are the meanings of the Old English titles (adjectives and descriptive phrases) applied to the monster Grendel. My aim here is to extract the argument with minimal copying and pasting of Old English.
Why 'remains'? Because the poem was composed at a moment in the wideranging processes of cultural fusion that arose when the hitherto heathen Angles and Saxons converted to Christianity - which is when the English tribes first learned the Latin letters of the modern English alphabet (Tolkien argues that the language of Beowulf reflects a moment when already established Christian poetry is extended in range to the new topic of the heathen past).Grendel remains primarily an ogre, a physical monster, whose main function is hostility to humanity (and its frail efforts at order and art upon earth). He is of the fífelcynne, a þyrse or eoten: in fact the eoten, for this ancient word is actually applied in Old English only to him. He is most simply called a foe...
The English back in the day when the poem was made - only a few generations after conversion, says Tolkien - could not but think of the old heathen monsters in the new Christian terms. But in Beowulf, he argues, we see this cultural appropriation at a very early moment - the longer term changes are still waiting to happen.
What did it mean that the ancient heathen monsters could only now be seen through a Christian lens? Basically, the Book of Christianity allowed only two options for monsters: (a) descent from Cain, (b) an evil spirit.
Regular Lore readers, compare the exegetical disagreement between myself and Ephtariat on Genesis 6: 4 and the Watchers of the apocryphal Book of Enoch - are we dealing with fallen angels or children of Cain?
As I get Tolkien on Beowulf, what he is saying is that where the critics had hitherto discerned confusion was really patiently crafted fusion - to a careful eye, it is just in the blending of these two possibilities in drawing the ancient northern monsters that the poet was working the real art.
In any case, Tolkien says that both of these two Christian notions of monster may be discerned in Grendel, but that Grendel is primarily, basically, a flesh and blood descendant of Cain - like us, a child of Adam and Eve. As such, says Tolkien, Grendel is "an image of man estranged from God".
But this Grendel as estranged son of Adam is "blended or confused" with Grendel the devil, the evil spirit estranged from God. Grendel's devilish qualities: ceaseless hostility to humans, hatred of their joy, superhuman size and strength, love of the dark. In addition, Grendel's hideousness and habitation in dark forsaken places are "undeveloped symbols" of his "devlish qualities". However, "real devlish qualities" like "deception and destruction of the soul" are hardly present (cf. Morgoth and Sauron).
In a nutshell. Grendel is a devlish ogre, a monster devouring the body and bringing temporal death, inhabited by an accursed spirit (as are humans by a soul).
Grendel is not yet a medieval devil revealing himself in ogre form, a spirit of evil aiming ultimately at the soul and bringing eternal death (even though he takes a form of visible horror, that may bring and suffer physical pain).
