Beowulf Free Write

The quote "it has been said of Beowulf itself that its weakness lies in placing the unimportant things at the center and the important on the outer edges." is important/relevant for multiple reasons. One being hat I find it interesting when authors criticize each others works and discuss its faults. It isn't something you see too often but Tolkien does this quite a bit. H does a similar thing in Fairy Stories where he criticizes stories that aren't actually fairy stories but claim to be. I also just find it interesting how authors perceive other stories as well because they have experience writing so it's always interesting what their opinions are about different works.

I also appreciate this quote because to me Tolkien does actually place seemingly unimportant things at the center of his stories and honestly a big theme in his works, which we have discussed in class at length, is the significance of the insignificant. So, for him to criticize another author for doing something similar to what he does seems hypocritical. However, Tolkien doesn't really place importance on these small details, which honestly become big details/hints once you read further, the importance of these details just becomes more apparent later on. Everything Tolkien does is intentional and not just for meaningless fluff. Due to this I think Tolkien criticizes this factor in Beowulf because it isn't done well.