Despite the unfortunate transition this class (and all my other classes) had to make from in-person to online, I do think I was able to successfully learn something valuable from this week's readings. I enjoyed analyzing these two main influential sources for Tolkien and finding the origin, you could say, of some of Tolkien's character types and overarching themes and ideas.
However, I think my biggest takeaway after reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Prose Edda was the fact that I've developed an even greater appreciation of the intricacy of the history and lore of Tolkien's writings. A common discussion point in both of this week's exercises was that although Tolkien drew lots of inspiration for various characters/themes/actions from these medieval texts, he almost always took these inspirations and wove them (mostly) delicately into his stories, always ensuring that they'd serve a logical purpose within his own world. I've definitely not studied all of Tolkien's sources by any means so I'm just basing this idea off of the knowledge I've gained from these two texts and other sources we've discussed in class, but reading his sources has made me more appreciative of Tolkien's "original" ideas. The race of hobbits, for example, are an original creation of Tolkien's. Essentially, I think it's important and useful to understand his sources because it a) gives credit where credit is due for bigger ideas and b) it highlights Tolkien's own unique creativity.
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