shape, though much larger: Heaney's translation of lines 1637–1639 also notes that Grendel's disembodied head is so large that it takes four men to transport it. Furthermore, in lines 983–989, when Grendel's torn arm is inspected, Heaney describes it as being covered in impenetrable scales and horny growths: Alfred Bammesgerber looks closely at line 1266 where Grendel's ancestry is said to be the "misbegotten spirits" that sprang from Cain after he was cursed. He argues that the words in Old English, geosceaftgasta, should be translated "the great former creation of spirits". Peter Dickinson (1979) argued that seeing as the considered distinction between man and beast at the time the poem was written was simply man's bipedalism, the given description of Grendel being man-like does not necessarily imply that Grendel is meant to be humanoid, going as far as stating that Grendel could easily have been a bipedal dragon. Other scholars such as Sherman Kuhn (1979) have questioned Grendel's description as a monster, stating: Katherine O'Keefe has suggested that Grendel resembles a berserker, because of numerous associations that seem to point to this possibility. Sonya R. Jensen argues for an identification between Grendel and Agnar, son of Ingeld, and suggests that the tale of the first two monsters is actually the tale of Ingeld, as mentioned by Alcuin in the 790s. The tale of Agnar tells how he was cut in half by the warrior Bothvar Bjarki (Warlike little Bear), and how he died "with his lips separated into a smile". One major parallel between Agnar and Grendel would thus be that the monster of the poem has a name perhaps composed of a combination of the words gren and daelan. The poet may be stressing to his audience that Grendel "died laughing", or that he was gren-dael[ed] or "grin-divid[ed]", after having his arm torn off at the shoulder by Beowulf, whose name means bee-wolf or bear. Depictions Grendel appears in many other cultural works. Citations General and cited references Cawson, Frank. The Monsters in the Mind: The Face of Evil in Myth, Literature, and Contemporary Life. Sussex, England: Book Guild, 1995: 38–39. Gardner, John. Grendel. New York, 1971. Heyne, Moritz. Harrison, James A. Sharp, Robert. Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Poem, and The Fight at Finnsburg: a Fragment Boston, Massachusetts: Ginn & Company, 1895. Jack, George. Beowulf: A Student Edition. Oxford University Press: New York, 1997. Jensen, S. R. Beowulf and the