Wheaton News

Professor Michael Drout authors popular book exploring Tolkien’s work

Nearly three decades of teaching, talking about and studying the works of J.R.R. Tolkien led to Professor Michael D.C. Drout’s latest book, The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation.

A long-time professor of English and the director of Wheaton College’s Center for the Study of the Medieval, Drout’s research on medieval literature and fantasy includes a particular interest in Tolkien.

In The Tower and the Ruin, Drout shares how Tolkien created a mythical world of legends, cultures, languages and histories through a highly detailed narrative that seems like a believable story to its generations of adoring readers.

The early success of the publication enabled it to rise to #1 on two Amazon.com’s Best Seller lists: “Literary Criticism: Science Fiction and Fantasy” and “Literary Criticism: British and Irish.”

“The Tower and the Ruin is the fruit of 28 years of my J.R.R. Tolkien course,” Drout explained. “Over the years I discovered that many of my students felt that reading The Hobbit and particularly The Lord of the Rings was more like having an experience than reading just another book … There are very few other books that affect people this way, and I thought it was worth trying to figure out how this all worked.”

The publication has garnered positive reviews from The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, in which Michael Keeley shares, “Drout loves Tolkien’s works, and his analysis aims to supplement the Tolkien reader’s enjoyment rather than disenchant. As he puts it, ‘understanding does not inevitably displace joy,’ and letting daylight in need not dispel magic. As I closed “The Tower and the Ruin,” I felt some envy for the hundreds of students who have taken Drout’s Tolkien classes.”

Prior to the book’s publishing,  Drout wrote guest essays about his affection for and analysis of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which were published in The New York Times and on Literary Hub in December 2025.

In the article posted on Literary Hub, “Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tolkien,” he shares that, as a young boy, his father read him The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on a loop for two years.

In his guest essay, “Why I Keep Returning to Middle-Earth,” published by The New York Times on Dec. 19, Drout shares that after his 18-year-old son died from a fentanyl overdose, he later discovered a light in the midst of his grief by turning to the words of Tolkien to find hope among his sorrow.

In Tolkien’s work, Drout wrote in his Times essay, “We see a path toward a place not free from sorrow but in which tears are blessed without bitterness because beyond the circles of the world, there is more than memory. We find hope.”

In addition to the recently published book, Drout also edited the award-winning Beowulf and the Critics by J.R.R. Tolkien, was the editor of the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment and is a founding co-editor of the academic journal, Tolkien Studies.