Michael D. C. Drout

NEWS

9/17/08: My new CD, Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits, is now available (see link to the right). The 2-CD set includes 10 classic Old English poems (including The Dream of the Rood and The Wanderer), Modern English translations, and commentaries by me.

8/18/07: I am speaking at several events this fall, including A Long-Expected Party in Kentucky and a conference on medieval authorship at the Unversity of Bergen, Norway.

8/18/08: I had forgotten to note that I was promoted to full Professor. I believe that now I can challenge people to duels. Now I have to buy a rapier that matches my academic robes.

8/18/08: Our research group (Prof. of Computer Science Mark LeBlanc, Prof. of Mathematics Michael Kahn) were awarded a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities for our lexomics project.

8/18/08: I have agreed to do another course for Recorded Books, The Anglo-Saxon World. Tentative recording scheduled for early 2009.

8/18/07: A new course from Recorded Books, A Way with Words IV: The Art of Poetry (title not finalized) is in the end stages of production.

8/18/07: Tolkien Studies volume 5 has shipped from the printer.

8/18/07: A new course from Recorded Books, A Way with Words III: Understanding Grammar for Powerful Communication, (aka "Grammar the Drout Way") is now available from Recorded Books.

8/21/07: Due to surprisingly high demand and equally surprisingly higher costs, I have had to raise the price of Beowulf Aloud to $20 for the 3-CD set plus $5 packing and shipping. You can go directly to http://beowulfaloud.com or use this Paypal Button.

7/1/2007: I am now the Chair of the English Department

2/21/07: Podcasts of the entire Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, posted as 50-100 line pieces each day, are now available at Anglo-Saxon Aloud.

11/05/06 The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia has now been published by Routledge.

My college courses on CD A Way With Words: Rhetoric, Writing and the Art of Persuasion and The History of the English Language are now available from Recorded Books.

Another version of my college course about Tolkien and Fantasy, Of Sorcerers and Men: Tolkien and the Roots of Modern Fantasy is available from Barnes and Noble.

8/3/06 My college course on CD, From Here to Infinity: An Exploration of Science Fiction is now available from Recorded Books.

Also, I forgot to mention here that I had the amazing good fortune to be awarded a Millicent C. McIntosh Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.

5/4/06: How Tradition Works has (finally!) been published. It is should be available through Cornell UP at 1.800.666.2211 or orderbook@cupserv.org . Of course if you want a signed copy, please contact me directly. I'll post when it arrives at Amazon and B&N.

4/11/06: My college course on CD, "Rings, Swords and Monsters: Understanding Fantasy Literature," is available from Recorded Books, and should be on sale soon [ok, apparently by July] in Barnes and Noble stores. My previous course for Recorded Books is Bard of the Middle Ages: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. My course on Science Fiction should be out in the early summer.

5/10/05: I was awarded Wheaton's William and Elsie Prentice Professorship (for outstanding teaching). The Professorship lasts for the next five years.

Recent and Current Research

J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf and the Critics

Winner: 2003 Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies

My edition of Tolkien's previously unpublished 1930's book of Beowulf criticism, from which he drew his famous lecture"Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." Published by Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies.

How Tradition Works

Published by Arizona Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies.

Click on the title for a complete prospectus. Subtitled "A Meme-Based Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century," this is my book on the workings of tradition. In it, I try to explain how traditions are created, how they evolve, and how and why they persist. The theoretical underpinnings include material from evolutionary biology, evolutionary epistemology and "memetics." The test cases and cultural analysis comes from my research speciality, the Anglo-Saxon tenth century. Texts examined include the Benedictine Rule and Regularis Concordia, the Anglo-Saxon wills, the Old English translation of the Enlarged Rule of Chrodegang and the 'wisdom poems' of the Exeter Book.

J.R.R. Tolkien Bibliography

Co-authored with Hilary Wynne and Melissa Higgins, this complete bibliography of Tolkien scholarship in English from 1984 to the present is currently available in .pdf form at Envoi. It will eventually be published in hard copy form. A fully searchable electronic database of Tolkien criticism will soon be available through this link.

Seafarer

Buy My Books/CDs

Buy Anglo-Saxon Aloud: Greatest Hits ($30.00 includes domestic shipping)

Please contact me directly if you want a signed copy of either book. Copies are also available through Cornell UP: 1-800-666-2211 or email orderbook@cupserv.org