[slight hijack]
Why is Beowulf considered a “classic English” novel when it was not written in England (or at least, we don’t really know where) and the characters are recognizably not-English?
[/slight hijack]
Actually, Beowulf is not usually considered a “classic English novel” – it’s a poem, not a novel. It almost certainly was written in England, however; the manuscript came from West Saxony (now southwest England), and the poem itself is written in West Saxon. The characters are Scandinavian, but the text definitely isn’t.