History: Imagining Robin Hood by A J Pollard
IMAGINING ROBIN HOOD: The Late-Medieval Stories in Context
Published: 21 November 2004
by A J Pollard
Routledge £15.99 pp272
As a fictional creation, Robin Hood has proved remarkably resilient, probably because from an early stage he stood at the heart of English popular culture, an archetype appealing to the gentry, the “middling sorts” and the lower orders in equal measure, although for subtly different reasons in each case. Indeed, it is likely that he long predated the late 15th and early 16th centuries, when versions of oral tradition were first written down. Like another book published earlier this year, which sought to decode the Bayeux Tapestry, this pithy, intriguing study endeavours to decode the Robin Hood stories.
The tales “did not advocate overturning the social order,” says A J Pollard, “but in many respects they located a Merry England in the communitarian ideals of the era before the Reformation”. It is only in some