Robin Hood:
The Uses and Re-uses of the
Popular Outlaw Hero
ENG6552: The Continuing Middle Ages
Thursday 5th March 2015 AS15
Structure
- Historiography
- The Medieval Robin Hood
- Yeoman Hero
- Robin Hood in the 16th Century
- Gentrification?
- Robin Hood in the Seventeenth Century
- The Eighteenth Century
- Brute, Buffoon, Hero
- Rediscovery and Reconstruction
- The Nineteenth Century
- The Medieval Revival
- Robin Hood of Hollywood
Historiography
James C. Holt,
Robin Hood, 1982
Barrie Dobson &
John Taylor,
Rymes of Robyn
Hood, 1976
Stephen Knight,
Robin Hood: A
Mythic Biography,
1994
Stephanie
Barczewski,
Myth and
National Identity,
2004
Historiography on Outlaws and
Highwaymen
Social Bandit – someone
whom the lord and state
regard as criminal, but
remain popular in peasant
societies as champions,
freedom fighters.
Eric Hobsbawm,
Bandits, 1969
Gillian Spraggs,
Outlaws and
Highwaymen, 2001
Participation Thesis
- Between c.1500 and c.1700 there was no such thing
as “high” culture and “popular” culture. All classes
shared in the same entertainments.
Withdrawal Thesis
- Middle and upper classes begin to withdraw from
participation in “popular” culture and an “elite”
culture emerges. C.1650 – late 1700s
Peter Burke, Popular
Culture in Early
Modern Europe, 1978
Rediscovery Thesis
- Around late 18th century middle-classes “rediscovered”
supposedly plebeian folk tales..
The Medieval Robin Hood
I can noughte parfitly my pater noster as the prest it syngeth, but I can rymes of
Robyn Hode and Randalf erle of Chestre – William Langland, Piers Plowman (c.1380).
“Lithe and lysten gentylmen
That be of frebore blode
I shall ye tell of a good yeman
His name was Robyn Hode.”
“Yeoman” – debates re: definitions:
- ‘independent and with a pride in
themselves and their free status,
who would brook interference from
no man’ (Keen, 1987, p.147).
- ‘an intermediary social category
between husbandman and
gentleman’ (Pollard, 2004, p.34).
- ‘These men enjoyed lower social
status than the knights, but they
were by no means menial; they were
fed and liveried and were often
drawn from gentle families’ (Holt,
1989, p.117).
Early Robin Hood
Ballads
- Robin Hood and the
Monk (c.1450)
- Robin Hood and Guy
of Gisborne (c.1470c.1506.)
- Robin Hood and the
Potter (c.1470).
- Robin Hood and the
Beggar (c.1450-1500).
Victorian illustration of Robin Hood killing
Guy of Gisborne.
The Medieval Audience
Rymes of Robin Hood
originally orally recited (not
sung).
James C. Holt argues that a
tale like the Geste was
performed for the courtly
classes, and notes its
similarity to other long
medieval Arthurian poems.
Thomas Ohlgren argues that
the ballads were originally
composed for an urban
audience, pointing to the
ballads’ celebration of forest
life being something town
dwellers wouldn’t experience.
Medieval ballad singers/minstrels (13th C.).
Knight brings in the history of printing to the
argument, saying that when tales such as the
Geste began to be printed, they were aimed at
an audience composed of those from a higher
class of society, but notes that tales of Robin
Hood were still enjoyed by lower classes
through the oral tradition
Function of Robin Hood Ballads
Entertainment!!!
Carnivalesque Entertainment?
May Day Celebrations c.1600
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1941). Rabelais
and his world. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
A “Bad” Robin Hood?
The 16th and 17th Centuries
Walter Bower, Scotichronicon,
15th Century
“the famous murderer, Robin
Hood, as well as Little John”.
John Major, Historia majoris
Britanniae, tam Angliae quam
Scotiae, 1521
“About this time it was, as I conceive,
that there flourished those most famous
robbers Robert Hood, an Englishman,
and Little John, who lay in wait in the
woods, but spoiled of their goods those
only that were wealthy.”
Gentrification?
Robert, Earl of Huntingdon
“in an olde and auncient Pamphlet I finde
this written of the sayd Robert Hood. This
man (sayth he) discended of a nobel
parentage: or rather beyng of a base stocke
and linage, was for his manhoode and
chivalry advaunced to the noble dignité of
an Erle.”
Richard Grafton, A Chronicle at Large and
meere History of the affayres of Englande and
Kinges of the Same, 1569
Gentrification (cont.)
Martin
Parker’s
ballad entitled A True
Tale of Robin Hood
(1631).
Anthony Munday, The Downfall of Robert, Earl of
Huntingdon & The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon
(c.1600).
Late Seventeenth/Early Eighteenth Century:
Hero, Brute, Buffoon
“We may begin by positing three categories of
thief: hero, brute, buffoon”
– Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account: The Forms
and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late
Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century
England (Cambridge UP, 1987), p.127.
Robin Hood the Brute
This bold robber, Robin Hood, was, some
write, descended of the noble family of
Huntingdon; but that is only fiction, for his
birth was but very obscure, his pedigree ab
origine being no higher than poor
shepherds.- Smith’s Highwaymen
He was bred up a butcher, but being of a
very licentious, wicked inclination, he
followed not his trade, but in the reign of
King Richard the First, associate[ed]
himself with several robbers and outlaws.
(Ibid).
‘Murder was viewed as ‘a direct attack on
God, carrying with it “a sacrilegious guilt”
that tainted the murderer’s society as well
as himself and could threaten both with
divine displeasure’- Lincoln B. Faller
(1987).
The Function of 18th-Century Criminal
Biography
Robin
Hood
the
Buffoon
Robin Hood the Hero
Robin Hood: That Celebrated English Outlaw
Robin Hood was born at Locksley, in the county
of Nottingham, in the reign of King Henry the
Second, and about the year of Christ 11 60. His
extraction was noble…He is frequently styled,
and commonly reputed to have been Earl of
Huntingdon.
In [the] forests, and with this company, he
for many years reigned like an
independent sovereign ; at perpetual war,
indeed, with the King of England…with an
exception, however, of the poor and needy.
That our hero and his companions, while
they lived in the woods, had recourse to
robbery for their better support is neither
to be concealed nor to be denied…But it is
to be remembered … [that] he took away
the goods of rich men only ; never killing
any person … [never] took anything from
the poor, but charitably fed them with the
wealth he drew from the abbots.
Gentrification?
Ritson’s Legacy:
The Nineteenth Century and the Medieval Revival
Scott ‘first turned men’s minds towards the
Middle Ages’ – Thomas Carlyle.
The Nineteenth Century (cont.)
The Nineteenth Century (cont.)
Robin Hood of Hollywood
You the freemen of this forest
swear to despoil the rich only to
give to the poor, to shelter the
old and the helpless, to protect
all women rich and poor,
Norman or Saxon, and swear to
fight for a free England, to
protect her loyally until the
return of our king and sovereign
Richard the Lionheart, and
swear to fight to the death
against all oppression.
The American Robin Hood
Most of the twentieth-century Robin
Hoods of television and film are in
some way a gentleman…the implied
consensus is that it is perfectly
appropriate to have a man of noble
[rich] birth leading a popular
movement – and of course the leaders
of the Democrats in America and the
Labour Party in Britain would agree.
(Knight, p.161).
Conclusion
Killer and gentleman, myth and everyday hero, village symbol and
international liberal, joker and rebel, nature lover and fierce
hunter, boyish charmer and father figure to children, man among
men and helper to strong women – Robin Hood’s identity seems to
undergo endless variations in verbal and visual texts.
Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca: Cornell
UP). P.204.
Any Questions?