Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition ed. by Stephen Knight (review)

Stephen Knight has proven Robin Hood’s most indefatigable and constant champion. His previous forays into the Greenwood have given us the still-definitive literary and cultural history of Robin, Robin’s ‘biography,’ editions of key texts, previous collections of essays by diverse hands, and assorted essays on Robin’s many continuing appearances in multiple venues and media. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition only takes Knight further into Sherwood.

The current volume offers ten essays, each excellent in its own right, and all linked by their discussions of the alterity that Knight in his introduction argues is key to understanding the enduring popularity of the legend of Robin Hood: ‘The crucial gap of otherness between law and outlaw is the domain of the Robin Hood myth and the many narratives that constantly recreate it’ (xi).

Individual essays in their discussions of texts subsequently at times diverge from each other and at times intersect in considering the implications of Robin Hood’s alterity. Thus Knight himself discusses the early ballad tradition in terms of parody; Alex Kaufman links A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode with Nietzsche’s herd; Lesley Coote looks to Roland Barthes as a foundation for comments on Robin Hood and the cultural biases of identity; John Block Friedman connects the history of archery contests with medieval manuscript illuminations of the sport; Helen Phillips traces conflict over the role of religion in the Robin Hood legend; Carrie Griffin’s close reading of the Forresters Manuscript reflects recent theorizing in the field of studies of the history of the book; Rob Gossedge reads Peacock’s Maid Marian in light of contemporary resistance to the enclosure movement; the late Brian J. Levy’s initial speculations about movement and gender in the Flynn and Costner Robin Hood films are further teased out by Lesley Coote; John Chandler links Robin and Batman as heroes past and present; and Valerie B. Johnson links contemporary issues with texts about outlaws in light of recent theories from Giorgio Agamben about homo sacer.

Robin Hood studies remains a fair field in need of folk, and Knight’s anthology seeks to professionalize such studies. The Robin Hood myth, like that of Arthur, has not wanted for interest or even unbridled enthusiasm. But lacking the canonicity afforded to Arthur by Geoffrey, Malory, Tennyson or White, Robin has in the past had difficulty moving beyond the popular. But Knight and his colleagues are successful here in laying out a new path through the Greenwood, one that leads to the application of formal academic methodology to the long and continuing legend of Robin and his band of merry men.