Robin Hood and the Medieval Society - Essay Example

AHH 3106: History and Myth: Writing and Re-writing the Middle Ages Tamas Zelei Module Leader: Dr. Katherine Lewis ROBIN HOOD AND THE MEDIEVALSOCIETY The legend of Robin Hood has received much attention from Historians recently. Many historians have discussed Robin Hood and come up with different conclusions concerning the contents of the stories and the audience. The conflicting stories make one want to review the stories and question whether Robin Hood was a true hero or a fictive hero. The essay will examine the Legend of Robin Hood and why it arose, and it means to the late medieval society. Andrew Wyntoun’s Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (c.1408–20), John Mair’s Historia Maioris Britanniae (c.1500-21) and Walter Bower’s Fordun’s Scotichronicon (c.1446), can be references to ‘rymes’ of Robin Hood and will often be used in the discussion. The writings constitute one of the two main straws that consider the outlaw’s origins may lie in a once-living, a person rather than a forest elf or ‘play-game figure’.1 The other writing of the other straw is archival material that Crook and Holt published which suggests that some form of the legends was present in Berkshire by 1261 and in Yorkshire in 1225. The testimonies about Robin Hood, existence by Wyntoun and Bower, are not regarded as a strong source due to its imprecise and divergent details. John Maddicott set aside the stories in building his case of outlaw in the early fourteenth century. In his absorbing study of the early Robin Hood poems, Thomas Ohlgren identifies a Wyntoun’s passage regarding the outlaw as ‘short, aphoristic lyric’ that is easily remembered and passed on orally. The action casts further doubt on the works historical value.2 Wyntoun was diffident in locating Robin Hood and Little John in Barnsdale and Inglewood during the years between 1283 and 1285. He dropped the characters in his narrative as if he was unsure of where they belonged. Since he was not an inventive writer, the source he had placed Robin Hood and his deputy in the late thirteenth century. Bower, on the other hand, testifies with great conviction when he locates the same findings as Wyntoun in the thorns’ of Barnsdale and woods briars in 1266. These accounts of Robin Hood represent lost traditions that had substantially early roots that would be considered reliable if it involved people whose existence has no doubt. In this regard, the reports can be said to be not certain from the thirteenth-century archival evidence of origins.3 The dates given by the findings are cannot be proven to be guess work though it is designed to anchor a tradition that historically has no fixed chronology. In Tudor and sources that come after that of Robin Hood, certain characters that have no place in the early medieval tradition, such as Friar Tuck and Maid Marian plays important roles in the saga. The account that sees Robin as a lover in Robin Hood and Maid Marian has its influence on his character and role in Tudor May Games. In the latter period, Robin is given the origin of aristocracy and court connections. Robin Hood goes to court in Robin Hood and Queen Katherine while we have other ballads about his birth and breeding. Martin Parker of 1632 represents Robin Hood as an Earl of Huntington, who dies in 1198 in his True Tale of Robin Hood.4 His work depicts Robin Hood as an aristocratic legend. The popularity of the vogue Robin Hood Legend in the seventeenth century owed a great deal to nostalgia and ‘Arcadianism’ to medieval England’s vanishing social world. The Robin Hood’s tales in the seventeenth century did not exhaust his influence as a legend. Some of the stories of his tales were printed in the eighteenth century in a simple chapbook version suitable for children and adults. Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe extended the audience of the Legend dramatically. The result was multiple printed versions of the Legend in the nineteenth century where Robin Hood was a hero. The actions and deeds of Robin Hood from the ballads have attraction to children. The tales of Robin Hood and his ‘merry men’ have a lasting effect and appeal. John Stow, a Tudor Historian, assigned Robin Hood to the time of Richard I. The gesture suggests they have been following the tradition that was first represented by John Major in History of Greater Britain (1521). There is no evidence in the early ballads that Robin Hood existed at the time of Richard I reign in the twelfth century. The ballads used are from a later period of the twelfth century. In an edition published in 1847 in London for Geste. the editor J. M. Gutch, suggests according to traditions, the political setting of the texts was that of Robin Hood as one of the disinherited people of Simon de Montfort and the twelve-sixties.5 It is the only possible date that shows evidence of Robin Hood in the twelfth century. The presence of Robin Hood and his followers in 1322 and 1323 was in consideration by J.W. Walker. Robin Hood had his support for Thomas of Lancaster in thirteen twenties and Walker brought forward evidence to support the claim. The new evidence was from Wakefield Court Rolls. Robin Hood bought land in Bick hill together with his wife is the evidence. It was after the defeat of Thomas of Lancaster that there was a new construction in Bick Hill according to the mentions in Contrarians Roll for Wakefield. It means Robert Hood lost his properties, thus outlawed. Payments on the building were to Robyn Hood, but the payments ended at the end of 1324. The Robyn Hood has its identity by all the Robin Hood ballads.6 There are similarities between Robert and Robyn Hood, and we should accept it is one and the same person. There are similarities between this Robin Hood and that of eighth fytte in the Lyttel Geste. He came to the King of Nottingham to ask for pardon and the King took him into his service. Robin later left the service and went back to the forest. There is, however, no evidence that the valet de chambre and Wakefield Robert Hood were the same persons. Various improbabilities are part of the idea of an early Gest date. It means that this compilation has survived for half a century before the earliest of its tales, Robin Hood, and the Monk and for a century before any other texts. It also means that there is a long text of the same tale that survived with no trace of the manuscript. It later got printed and was still in an undamaged and unvaried form. Fowler says the poem could not have lasted long before it went into print. These considerations suggest the existence of Robin Hood in the mid-fifteenth century. 1450 is a safer date than 1400 for the existence of the Robin Hood manuscript. The date of the text varies thus the date of the events in it are equally obscure. Historians feel its legal, military and social structures belong to the thirteenth century but overlook the medieval narrative characters and the fictional settings. The Gest has its operations in Yorkshire Barnsdale, and yet Little John hurries from Nottingham, which is fifty miles away, to rejoin his companions in less than one day.7 They are apparently in Sherwood, but the name is not in Gest. There have been two separate ballads condensed, but the geography of Robin Hood is general with the only specific reference being that of Yorkshire Barnsdale. There has been a dispute over the years regarding the audience of the poems. Early commentators had no issue with the audience, assuming that the ballads served some community that is not in its time, or that the author directly communicated to the audience. There was greater specificity from a more historically attuned approach. There is a strong argument by Rodney Hilton for continuity between the Robin Hood ballads that including the Gest and the disagreeing forces in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. It got support from Maurice Keen in his first edition of the book The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (1961). J. C. Holt attacks the radical affiliation in the article by saying, with evidence that peasant and rural issues are nowhere in the texts, and he proposed that the disagreeing audience is the lower gentry. Holt gets back to the issue in his book. He gives a whole chapter of full details with the intention to prove the characters essentially conservative nature. He talks of the texts and the audience, which are supposed to cover the anxiousness regarding the landowning gentry and its affiliations. The argument looks open to Holts rejection techniques through lack of enough internal evidence, such that the knight in the Gest is the only one with tenurial problems in his mind. The rest of the book’s characters resist all forms of service unless it is to Robin Hood.8 Recent arguments regarding Hilton’s work satisfy the audience in political resistance, resting their case on cultural diffusion over the years. The writers also relate the strains and problems in the text to urban problems. There is a Polychronicon, Eton College MS 213 made around 1420. It is interesting of the copious and unusual marginal annotations it contains, one of which is the reference to Robin Hood and his associates. Neil Ker points out in an accurate and detailed description of the manuscript, numerous additions to it by the principal annotator concerning the diocese of Bath and Wells. It might be a coincidence, but most of the manuscript must have been in the possession of the Charterhouse. The hand of Robin Hood inscription, a standard and neat secretary, is recognized by that of the principal annotator.9 All of the letters are in the royal genealogy at the beginning of the manuscript, the text which got executed by the principal annotator. Robin and his accomplices illustrate in the writing an anti-morality and reckless, a form of living that is at odds with Carthusian enclosure and conservatism. The inscription puts the outlaws in the 1290s, but their latter-day counterparts were in the fifteenth-century monks minds, specifically in the wake of Cade’s rebellion.10 After medievalism Robin Hood still remained a symbolic figure for historians and for filmmakers up to the present time. There are movies made about him in genres, like comedy, action and adventure with relative success. He was portrayed as a warrior and a hero of these motion pictures. The most successful one of all is Robin Hood: The Prince of Thieves (1991) with Kevin Costner , seen as an outlaw. The film also combines action, adventure and drama showing his love interest, Marian. However the most recent Robin Hood (2010) directed by Ridley Scott offers a different approach to the legendary character. He gives us an insight of Robin Hood as a child and that how he became a warrior, an outlaw and a hero. Certainly the films are not historically accurate though they help us to provide information and facts whether Robin Hood was a real character or a fictive. Aberth in his book emphasizes the degree to which the film makers of Robin Hood use medieval subjects to arouse contemporary problems and concerns in the society. Aberth suggests that each era of Robin Hood reinvents its mythical heroes so as to resonate with its own time. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) features the double concerns of Americans in the 1930s concerning depression and the war in Europe.11 Robin Hood is depicted a hero in the film. Conclusion The tales and different texts of Robin Hood place him in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth century. The texts from the thirteenth century, however, have no basis and evidence for the existence of Robin Hood during those years. The tales from the other centuries, however, have evidence of the existence of Robin Hood, his followers, and its outlaws. Bibliography Primary Sources Child, F.J. ‘Robin Hood and Little John No. 125’, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, (London: Routledge, 1888) Bellamy, J. Robin Hood: An Historical Inquiry, (Bloomington: D. S. Brewer,1985) Gutch, J. M. A Lytelle Gest of Robin Hood and other Auncient and Modern Ballads and Songs: Relating to the Celebrated Yeoman, Vol 2. (London: Routledge,1847) Holt, J. C. Robin Hood. London: Folio society,2007) Secondary Sources Aberth, J. A knight at the movies: medieval history on film (New York: Routledge, 2003) Dobson, R.B. and Taylor, J. Northern History: A Review of the history of the North of England, Volume VII. (London: Routledge, 1972) Dobson, R. B. and Taylor, J. Rhymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to the Yorkshire Outlaw (London: Routledge, 1976) Field, S. ‘Devotion, discontent, and the Henrician Reformation: the evidence of the Robin Hood stories’, Journal of British Studies, 41, pp. 6–22 (2002) Fowler, D. C. A Literary History of the Popular Ballad. Durham (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1968) Keen, M. The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, Revised ed. (London: Routledge, 1977) Knight, S and Ohlgren,T ‘A Gest of Robyn Hode: Introduction’, in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (London: Routledge, 1997) Knight, S. Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2003) Luxford, J. M. ‘An English chronicle entry on Robin Hood’, Journal of Medieval History, 35, 1, pp. 70-76 (2009) Pollard, A. J. Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context (London: Routledge, 2004) Medieval Movies [Online] Available at: http://www.medievalists.net/movies/ (accessed 21 March 2015) Read More