‘Merry Men at Work’: The Transformation of Robin Hood From Medieval Outlaw Into Heritage Hero

Abstract

EVER SINCE PROFESSOR RODNEY HILTON and Sir James Holt inaugurated in the late nineteen-fifties the first systematic discussion of the origins and early audience of the Robin Hood legend, historians have tended to lament the reluctance of literary critics to enter an increasingly energetic if often inconclusive debate. Now, at last and with something of a vengeance, that reluctance has been overcome. Members of university English departments figure prominently among the fifteen contributors to Dr Kevin Carpenter's remarkable Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated Outlaw. As such they playa crucial role in making this lengthy and lavishly illustrated catalogue of a travelling Robin Hood exhibition (currently proceeding from Oldenburg to Berlin by way of Zurich and Groningen) the most ambitious introductory guide to English greenwood literature, art, and film ever produced. More original and notable still is Professor Stephen Knight's single-handed achievement in using a wide range of literary and other sources to create what his publishers describe as 'the first complete analytic account of this major mythic figure'. Here indeed is a book which demonstrates to perfection the exhilarating results of seeing the perspectives of modern textual criticism directed at the centraland sometimes less than centralitems in the Robin Hood literary canon. Often disconcerting, frequently persuasive, sometimes excessively ingenious, this is above all a stimulating study of the development of England's most distinctive medieval legend, especially stimulating in fact for the centuries after the Middle Ages were over. If there was ever any danger perhaps unlikely that Robin Hood might lose his appeal within the seminar rooms of English and other universities at the end of the twentieth century, Professor Knight has now done as much as any recent scholar to ensure that the study of his legend will continue to evolve, to fascinate and to perplex. In particular, perhaps no other survey of the subject has been more successful in demonstrating appropriately enough for a medieval outlaw that 'what Robin does not stand for is anything static' . Professor Knight's book accordingly tends to exemplify the major conclusion to emerge from Kevin Carpenter's exhibition catalogue too, namely that 'every generation gets the Robin Hood it deserves'. It is admittedly for that reason, if not for that reason alone, that the late medieval greenwood hero does indeed deserve to be treated seriously. Despite his occasional jeux d'esprit, Professor Knight