Thoughts on Grendel...

When I read Beowulf in high school, one of the things we talked about, and even did a project on, was how Grendel was never physically described throughout the tale. The poet talks about how Grendel walks and thinks, and acts, but never what he really looks like. It is just occurring to me how strange this is, especially considering that Beowulf was most likely a orally transmitted tale long before it was written, meaning that the person telling it would have wanted to put as much detail into as possible to keep people entertained, and the description of a monster is pretty entertaining. There is the possibility that there was, at one point, a description of Grendel in the story that just didn't make it into the written version of the story, however, other than that I'm not sure why there wouldn't be a description of Grendel.