A01=Michael DC Drout
Author_Michael DC Drout
bio
biography
Category=DNBL
Category=DSBH
Category=DSK
Category=FL
Category=FM
Category=JN
craft
elvish
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_fantasy
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science-fiction
eq_society-politics
fantasy
gondolin
language
literary criticism
lord of the rings
middle-earth
mythology
return of the king
rings of power
silmarillion
the hobbit
two towers
world building
writing
Product details
- ISBN 9781324093886
- Weight: 655g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 02 Dec 2025
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his world of Middle-earth. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D.C. Drout explores Tolkien’s genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of works from The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion to lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as his poetry. We see how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how, early on, Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala and other medieval literature from Northern Europe, and how he later developed the complex form of sorrow that is the primary theme of his mature works. Sweeping and hugely perceptive The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew.
Michael D.C. Drout is a professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College. He specializes in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction and fantasy, especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin, and is the author of How Tradition Works and Drout’s Quick and Easy Old English, among others. He lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.
