Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465-1560 : Texts, Contexts, and Ideology

Thomas H. Ohlgren · Lister M. Matheson

Jan 2007 · University of Delaware Press

About this ebook

While references to Robin Hood began to appear as early as the thirteenth century in legal records, the earliest surviving poems did not appear in manuscripts and early printed books until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Several fourteenth-century allusions in the works of William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer suggest that the rymes of Robyn Hood were widely circulating by the 1370s, but, it is vital to note, none of these late fourteenth-century works survives. A better approach, Thomas H. Ohlgren argues, is to focus on what has actually survived rather than on what might have existed. As a result, the poems Robin Hood and the Monk and Robin Hood and the Potter, which survive in two different Cambridge manuscripts of the last third of the fifteenth century, and A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, which was printed at least seven times in the sixteenth century, must receive pride of place in the canon because they have a physical reality as material artifacts - in short, they exist and provide valuable information about the places and times of their composition and dissemination.

Ratings and reviews

Books on Robin Hood are published every year. Most of them are for the popular market. For those who really want to study the history of the Robin Hood legend, there are only a few really vital books: F. J. Child's "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads," J. C. Holt's "Robin Hood," Dobson and Taylor's "Rymes of Robyn Hood." Now you can add this book to the list. There is no better source of information about the copies of the early Robin Hood romances -- the "Gest of Robyn Hode," "Robin Hood and the Monk," and "Robin Hood and the Potter." But be prepared to take the results with more than a grain of salt. There is a LOT of speculation in this book, and some of it ill-founded. Ohlgren, for instance, thinks he has identified the printer of two copies of the "Gest of Robyn Hode" based on the typefaces -- but the typographic information is not sufficient to support the conclusions. He suggests that the "Gest" is targeted to guilds -- but can provide no direct support for this assumption. I emphasize: Ohlgren's work is of great value. Scholars need this book. But there is still room on the shelf for a sequel or two.