Michael D. C. Drout (/draʊt/; born 3 May 1968) is an American Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval atWheaton College. He is anauthor andeditor specializing inAnglo-Saxon andmedieval literature,science fiction andfantasy, especially the works ofJ. R. R. Tolkien andUrsula Guin.

Drout holds a PhD in English fromLoyola University Chicago (May 1997), an MA in English from theUniversity of Missouri (May 1993), an MA in Communication fromStanford University (May 1991), and a BA in Professional and Creative Writing fromCarnegie Mellon University.

He is best known for his studies ofJ. R. R. Tolkien's scholarly work onBeowulf and the precursors and textual evolution of the essayBeowulf: the Monsters and the Critics, published asBeowulf and the Critics by J. R. R. Tolkien (2002), which won theMythopoeic Award for Scholarship in Inklings Studies, 2003.^[1]

He is the editor of theJ.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (2007), a one-volume reference on Tolkien's works and their contexts.^[2]

With the Tolkien scholarsDouglas Anderson andVerlyn Flieger, he is co-editor ofTolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review, (Volumes 1–7, 2004–2010).

Books written or edited by Michael Drout include:

• 2002, (editor),Beowulf and the Critics by J. R. R. Tolkien, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 248 (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), Tempe, AZ,ISBN 0-86698-290-6
• 2007, (editor),J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (New York; London: Routledge, 2007),ISBN 9780415969420; reprinted 2013,ISBN 9781135880347

Drout has published thirteen audio lectures forRecorded Books' Modern Scholar Series. He has both a love of theAnglo-Saxon language, and academic expertise in its linguistic basis for the modern English Language; he maintains a growing collection of recorded Anglo-Saxon onAnglo-Saxon Aloud.

• Faculty page at Wheaton College
• Michael D. C. Drout'sVita
• Tolkien Studies bibliographic information at Muse

• Michael D. C. Drout's personal home page

• Living people
• Tolkien scholars
• University of Missouri alumni
• 1968 births
• Anglo-Saxon studies scholars
• American medievalists
• Carnegie Mellon University alumni
• American academics of English literature
• Wheaton College (Massachusetts) faculty

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata