Professor Drout received his Ph.D. in medieval literature from Loyola University in 1997. He also holds M.A. degrees from Stanford (journalism) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (English literature) and a B.A. from Carnegie Mellon. Professor Drout was awarded the Faculty Appreciation Award for teaching by the Wheaton College class of 2002. He is the editor of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf and the Critics, which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies for 2003. His most recent book, How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century, will be published by Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Studies in 2005. Drout is one of the founding editors of the journal Tolkien Studies and is editor of The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, which will be published by Routledge in 2006. Drout has published extensively on medieval literature, including articles on William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the Anglo-Saxon wills, the Old English translation of the Rule of Chrodegang, the Exeter Book “wisdom poems,” and Anglo-Saxon medical texts. He has also published articles on Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books and Susan Cooper’s Dark Is Rising series of children’s fantasy novels. Drout has written an Old English grammar book, King Alfred’s Grammar, which is available for free at his website, www.michaeldrout.com. He has given lectures in England, Finland, Italy, Canada, and throughout the United States.
