Imagining Robin Hood: The Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context - A.J. Pollard

of "primary sources." Joel T. Rosenthal. State University of Nexu York at Stony Brook. Imagining Robin Hood: The Late Medieval Stories in Historical Context.
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Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context by A.J. Pollard
Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context

Pollard's careful delineation of what a yeoman was and was not clarifies many aspects of the role, although the truth remains that the term was used in a number of different ways. In Robin Hood's case, Pollard posits that he was a forester-yeoman, a role that allowed him an elevated level of autonomy and yet still designated him as a legitimate and contributing member of society.

Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context by A.J. Pollard

The fact that such men tended to live in the forest, like many outlaws did, explains in part the weird conflation in the Robin Hood character of outlaw and hero qualities. For Pollard, this class designation of the yeoman establishes much of the ambiguity of the Robin Hood figure: Thus, Robin's social position is the entry point for his subversive role, a fact that may reflect late-medieval anxiety about the middling class itself. Pollard's book goes on to consider other aspects of Robin Hood as a representative of late medieval class politics and ideals, specifically looking at the character's symbolic relationship to the church, the throne, and late medieval civic authorities like fraternities.

As the tag "steals from the rich and gives to the poor" indicates, we expect Robin Hood to have a subversive relationship with authority, who are by and large "the rich. While he seems to react against the corruption of crown and church, Robin Hood actually reinforces royal and religious authority if it is just and fair.

Furthermore, Pollard's book explores Robin Hood's associations with fraternal societies If you would like to authenticate using a different subscribed institution that supports Shibboleth authentication or have your own login and password to Project MUSE, click 'Authenticate'. View freely available titles: Book titles OR Journal titles.

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It is also a very attractive physical object with an elegant typeface and layout and a number of well-reproduced colour illustrations.

Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context

After an introductory chapter on 'Texts and Contexts', Pollard proceeds to examine aspects of the fifteenth century imagining of Robin Hood. A chapter on 'Yeomanry' examines the persistent presentation of Robin as 'yeoman' and asks what exactly this term might have meant to those early audiences before concluding that, although his 'yeomanry' is 'a complex, if not to say confusing, matter', yet 'the particular and unambiguous identification of Robin Hood as a very specific kind of yeoman, a yeoman of the forest, or forester, provides a fixed point of reference in this fluidity' p.

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Further chapters deal with the notion of the greenwood, attitudes to crime and violence, religion and the religious the latter often the focus of Robin's attacks , the key concept of 'fellowship' and what it might have meant in pre-Reformation England, and authority and the social order. Because Pollard brings a depth of historical knowledge to his study he is able to show us how much the picture of Robin in these versions is determined by the social conditions of the fifteenth century but he also constantly reminds us that these works are also a product of the literary imagination.

For instance, with regard to the persistent location of Robin Hood in northern parts of England, he points out that 'It is not the north as it was known and experienced by well-travelled and well-informed southerners that infuses the stories; it is the stereotypical north of literary convention' p.