Hi, Tar-Telperien! Good to see you.
The issue of how to handle 'Beren and Luthien' was considered at some length a few years ago. I believe the thread with the most important discussion on this point was
General discussion about the verse material. The point you make is a good one, and certainly there are arguments to be made (and indeed that were made) for using prose. However, I still think our decision to use verse for the majority of 'Beren and Luthien' was the right one, for these reasons:
- By far the most complete version of the story by Tolkien is the Lay of Leithien; using prose would have meant either omitting a very large amount of material or engaging in 'creative writing' to transform verse into prose.
- We are explicitly not trying to create the Middle-earth text called 'Quenta Silmarillion' (which certainly would include only the prose version) itself.
- Our primary goal is not to create a work with the greatest possible literary value but rather to create the most complete and 'correct' narrative possible. So the literary inelegance of switching back and forth between verse and prose is not of critical importance.
Of course, it goes without saying that if you want to try and create a strictly prose version, we'd all be very interested to read it!
Apologies to everyone, by the way, for another long period of inactivity. I am hoping to get back into things here in the next week or two.