Criticism

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-15. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2020-09-01.

This page lists works in literary criticism and cultural studies dealing with the Robin Hood tradition.

Essential

• Ohlgren, Thomas. Robin Hood: the Early Poems, 1465-1560: Texts, Contexts, and Ideology (Newark, ©2007)
• Nelson, Malcolm A. The Robin Hood Tradition in the English Renaissance (Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Elizabethan & Renaissance Studies, vol. 14) (1973)
• Singman, Jeffrey L. Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend (Contributions to the Study of World Literature, No. 92) (Westport, Connecticut; London, 1998).

Significant

• Benyon, John. 'Robin Hood is alive and well in Cityton Prison', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 233-55
• Bessinger, Jr, Jess Balsor 1966a
• Bessinger, Jr, Jess Balsor 1952a
• Blamires, David. 'Maid Marian in Twentieth-century Children's Books', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 44-57
• Blunk, Laura. 'And for the best supporting hero ... Little John', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 196-216
• Brockman, Bennett A. 'Robin Hood and the Invention of Children's Literature', Children's Literature, vol. 10 (1982), pp. 1-17
• Butler, Michelle M. '"All the yemandry that ys here": Mankind and Robin Hood', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 219-38
• Carroll, Michael P. 'The Early Robin Hood and "The Myght of Mylde Marye": Revisiting the Lived Experience of Catholicism in Late Medieval England', Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, vol. 43 (2014), pp. 116-34
• Castleberry, Kristi J. 'Sailing the Little John: John Ward and Legitimizing Outlaw Space', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 132-46
• Chandler, John H. 'Robin Hood: Development of a Popular Hero' (2006), at: The Robin Hood Project: a Robbins Library Digital Project (University of Rochester)
• Chandler, John. 'Batman and Robin Hood: Hobsbawm's Outlaw Heroes Past and Present', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 187-206
• Chen, Jianguo. 'Figures of "Robin Hood" in the Chinese Cultural Imaginary', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 217-33
• Chism, Christine. 'Mortal Friends in Robin and Gandelyn and the Medieval Robin Hood Ballads', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 40-56
• Cooper, Helen. 'A Tale of Robin Hood: Robin Hood as Bishop', in: Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 75-90
• Coote, Lesley. 'Journeys to the Edge: Self-Identity, Salvation, and Outlaw(ed) Space', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 47-66
• Coote, Lesley. Storyworlds of Robin Hood: the Origins of a Medieval Outlaw ([London], 2020)
• Cotten-Spreckelmeyer, Antha. 'Robin Hood: Outlaw or Exile?', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 133-45
• Driver, Martha W. '"We Band of Brothers": Rousing Speeches from Robin Hood to Black Knight', in: Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 91-106
• Evans, Michael R. 'A Song of Freedom": Geoffrey Trease's Bows against the Barons', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 188-96
• Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006)
• Friedman, John Block. 'Robin Hood and the Social Context of Late Medieval Archery', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 67-85
• Gaylord, Alan T. '"There was something about him that spoke of other things than rags and tatters": Howard Pyle and the Language of Robin Hood', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 153-73
• Gossedge, Rob. 'Thomas Love Peacock, Robin Hood, and the Enclosure of Windsor Forest', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 135-64
• Gray, Douglas. 'Everybody's Robin Hood', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 21-41
• Green, Richard Firth. 'The hermit and the outlaw: new evidence for Robin Hood's death?', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 51-59
• Griffin, Carrie. 'The Forresters Manuscript: A Book on the Margins?', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 119-33
• Griffin, Carrie. 'The Play's the Thing: Establishing Boundaries in Anthony Munday's The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 57-69
• Griffy, Henry. 'The Work of Robin Hood Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 123-37
• Hahn, Thomas; Knight, Stephen. '"Exempt Me, Sire, For I Am Afeard of Women": Gendering Robin Hood', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 24-43
• Hahn, Thomas. 'Robin Hood and the Rise of Cultural Studies', in: Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 39-54
• Halsey, Alan. A Robin Hood Book (Hay-on-Wye, 1996). Literature and criticism. Mind expanding.
• Harlan-Haughey, Sarah; Coote, Lesley A., ser. ed.; Kaufman, Alexander L., ser. ed. The Ecology of the English Outlaw in Medieval Literature: From Fen to Greenwood / Sarah Harlan-Haughey (Outlaws in Literature, History, and Culture, [vol. I]) (London [recte: Abingdon, Oxfordshire] and New York, 2016). See especially ch. 4, "The Menace in the Greenwood: Gamelyn, Gisborne, and Little John" (pp. 143-77) and ch. 5, "Chasing the Green Hart" (pp. 178-98).
• Hanawalt, Barbara A. 'Portraits of Outlaws, Felons, and Rebels in Late Medieval England', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 45-66
• Hepworth, David. 'A Grave Tale', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 91-112
• Johnson, Valerie B. The Legend of Robin Hood: From Medieval Ballad to Modern Novel (unpublished B.A. honors thesis; Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College, 2002)
• Johnson, Valerie B. ‘Exempt me Sire, for I am afeared of women’: Contemporary Romance Novels and the Robin Hood Tradition (unpublished Master’s Essay; Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester, 2006)
• Johnson, Valerie B. 'Agamben's Homo Sacer, the "State of Exception", and the Modern Robin Hood', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 207-27
• Johnson, Valerie B. 'A Forest of Her Own: Greenwood-Space and the Forgotten Female Characters of the Robin Hood Tradition', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 21-39
• Kaler, Anne K. 'Who is that Monk in the Hood?: Friar Tuck, Francis of Assisi, and Robin Hood', Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 30 (1997), pp. 51-74
• Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011)
• Kaufman, Alexander L. 'Histories of Contexts: Form, Argument, and Ideology in A Gest of Robyn Hode', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 146-64
• Kaufman, Alexander L. 'Nietzsche's Herd and the Individual: The Construction of Alterity in A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hood', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 30-46
• Kaufman, Alexander L. 'Strange Genealogies: Robin Hood's Courtship with Jack Cade's Daughter and the Creation of a Fraudulent Text', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 70-87
• Kirgiss, Crystal. 'Popular Devotion and Prosperity Gospel in Early Robin Hood Tales', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 165-78
• Knight, Stephen. 'Bold Robin Hood: The Structures of a Tradition', Southern Review, vol. 20 (1987), pp. 153-67
• Knight, Stephen. 'Robin Hood and the Royal Restoration', Critical Survey, vol. 5 (1993), pp. 298-312
• Knight, Stephen. Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1994). A study which pays more attention to post-Medieval developments than some prior works on the outlaw tradition (presumably this circumstance suggested the book's immodest subtitle). There are a good many points of detail where a more thorough analysis must lead one to disagree with Knight.
• Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood: Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (Cambridge, 1999). A useful but overpriced selection of previously published Robin Hood criticism.
• Knight, Stephen. 'Robin Hood and the Crusades: When and Why Did the Longbowman of the People Mount Up Like a Lord?', Florilegium, vol. 23 (2006), pp. 201-22
• Knight, Stephen. "'Meere English Flocks': Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd and the Robin Hood tradition", in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 129-44
• Knight, Stephen. 'Robin Hood and the Crusades: When and Why Did the Longbowman of the People Mount Up Like a Lord?', Florilegium, vol. 23 (2006), pp. 201-22
• Knight, Stephen. 'Robin Hood: The Earliest Contexts', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 21-40
• Knight, Stephen. 'Rabbie Hood: The Development of the English Outlaw Myth in Scotland', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 99-118
• Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011])
• Knight, Stephen. 'Alterity, Parody, Habitus: the Formation of the Early Literary Tradition of Robin Hood', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 1-29
• Knight, Stephen. 'Robin Hood: Politics and Myth', Arena, No. 121 (Dec. 2012 - Jan. 2013), pp. 42-46
• Knight, Stephen. 'Parody and Archery: Re-Generating the Robin Hood Tradition', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 191-208
• Krasner, Orly Leah. 'To Steal from the Rich and Give to the Poor: Reginald de Koven's Robin Hood', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 242-55
• Leahy, Mark. '"Where Shall We Rob?": Fantasies of Justice in the Early Robin Hood Ballads', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 204-18
• Levy, Brian J.; Coote, Lesley. 'Mouvance, Greenwood, and Gender in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 165-86
• Marshall, John. 'Picturing Robin Hood in Early Print and Performance: 1500-1590', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 60-82
  • Marshall, John. 'Picturing Robin Hood in Early Print and Performance: 1500–1590', in: Marshall, John; Butterworth, Philip, ed. Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games (Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2020), pp. 316-36
• Marshall, John. 'Revisiting and Revising Robin Hood in Sixteenth-Century London', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 111-31
  • Marshall, John. 'Revisiting and Revising Robin Hood in Sixteenth-Century London', in: Marshall, John; Butterworth, Philip, ed. Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games (Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2020), pp. 337-57
• Marshall, John; Butterworth, Philip, ed. Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games (Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2020)
• May, Jill. 'Robin Hood's Home Away from Home: Howard Pyle and His Art Students', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 138-52
• McInnis, Judy B. 'The Images of Robin Hood and Don Juan in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 234-41
• Nielsen, Henrik Thiil. The Literary Evidence of the Gest of Robin Hood and the Origins of the Outlaw Tradition (M.A. thesis, University of Copenhagen, 1990)
• Noone, Kristin. 'Highwaymen, Robbers, and Rogues in the Twentieth Century', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 88-97
• Oakley-Brown, Liz. 'Framing Robin Hood: temporality and textuality in Anthony Munday's Huntington plays', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 113-128
• Ohlgren, Thomas H. 'Merchant adventure in Robin Hood and the Potter', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 69-78
• Ohlgren, Thomas. '"God send us a good scheryf thys yere": Oppositional Ideology in the Early Robin Hood Poems', in: Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 107-19
• Ormrod, William Mark. 'Robin Hood and Public Record: The Authority of Writing in the Medieval Outlaw Tradition', in: Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 57-74
• Ohlgren, Thomas H. 'The Ghostly Forester in Walsingham's Chronicon Angliae: A Template for Robin Hood?', in: Yager, Susan, ed.; Morse-Gagné, Elise E., ed. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, Utah, 2013), pp. 23-32
• Pearcy, Roy. 'The literary Robin Hood: character and function in Fitts 1, 2 and 4 of the Gest of Robyn Hode', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 60-68
• Pearsall, Derek. 'Little John and the ballad of Robin Hood and the Monk', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 42-50
• Perry, Evelyn M. 'The Battle to Possess Sherwood', The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 109 (1996), pp. 437-440
• Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005)
• Phillips, Helen. 'Robin Hood, the prioress of Kirklees and Charlotte Brontë', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 154-66
• Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008)
• Phillips, Helen. 'Bandit Territories and Good Outlaws', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 1-23
• Phillips, Helen. 'Scott and the Outlaws', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 119-42
• Phillips, Helen. '"A gay yeman, under a forest side": "The Friar's Tale" and the Robin Hood Tradition', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 123-37
• Phillips, Helen. '"Merry" and "Greenwood": A History of Some Meanings', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 83-101
• Phillips, Helen. 'Reformist Polemics, Reading Publics, and Unpopular Robin Hood', in: Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood in Greenwood Stood: Alterity and Context in the English Outlaw Tradition. edited by Stephen Knight (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, vol. 1) (Turnhout, Belgium, ©2012 [2011]), pp. 87-117
• Pollard, A. J. 'Political Ideology in the Early Stories of Robin Hood', in: Appleby, John C., ed.; Dalton, Paul, ed. Outlaws in Medieval and Early Modern England: Crime, Government and Society C. 1066–c. 1600 (Farnham, Surrey, 2009), pp. 111-28
• Potter, Lois. 'Robin Hood and the fairies: Alfred Noyes' Sherwood', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 167-180
• Rahman, Sabina. Robin Hood and the Three Estates of Medieval Society (unpublished Master of Philosophy thesis; Sydney: University of Sydney, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, 2016)
• Richards, Jeffrey. 'Robin Hood, King Arthur and Cold War Chivalry', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 167-95
• Rouse, Andrew C. 'The Folk Song Lyric – From Classlessness to Classriddenness', Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 9 (2003), pp. 209-221
• Rowland, Thomas. "'And Now Begins Our Game": Revitalizing the Ludic Robin Hood, in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 175-88
• Seal, Graham. 'The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit', Journal of Folklore Research, vol. 46 (2009), pp. 67-89
• Smith, Marcus A. J.; Wasserman, Julian N. 'Sketches by a Green Crayon: Washington Irving, Robin Hood and the Emerging American Frontier', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 143-66
• Spraggs, Gillian. Outlaws & Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (London, 2001). See especially chapters 5: 'The Robin Hood Tradition', 6: 'Good Fellows and Sworn Brothers', and 7: 'Guests at Robin Hood's Table'
• Stock, Lorraine Kochanske. 'Recovering Reginald de Koven's and Harry Bache Smith’s "Lost" Operetta Maid Marian', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 256-65
• Symons, Dana. 'Relishing the kill, Becoming a Man: Robin Hood's Rivalry with Guy of Gisborne', in: Coote, Lesley, ed.; Johnson, Valerie B., ed. Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (Outlaws in Literature, History and Culture) (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, 2017), pp. 147-62
• Tardiff, Richard 1983a
• Thompson, Kimberly A. Macaure. 'The Late Medieval Robin Hood Ballads: Economics Revisited', in: Kaufman, Alexander L., ed. British Outlaws of Literature and History (Jefferson, NC, 2011), pp. 179-203
• Troost, Linda. 'The noble Peasant', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Robin Hood: Medieval and Post-Medieval (Dublin, 2005), pp. 145-153
• Utter, Benjamin Daniel. "Fawty and Falce": Sin, Sanctity, and the Heroics of Devotion in Late Medieval English Literature. Dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy ([Minneapolis, MN]: University of Minnesota, 2016). Ch. 4, pp. 185-247: '"Thys ys bot weke gere": Dismas, Devotion, and Desperation in the Early Robin Hood Ballads'.
• Winick, Stephen D. 'Reynardine and Robin Hood: Echoes of an Outlaw Legend in Folk Balladry', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 51-59
• Wright, Allen W. '"Begone, knave! Robbery is out of fashion hereabouts!": Robin Hood and the Comics Code', in: Phillips, Helen, ed. Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions (Cardiff, 2008), pp. 217-32
• Yongue, Patricia Lee. 'The Play's the Thing: Tom Sawyer Re-enacts Robin Hood', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 174-87.

Of interest

• Anonymous. '1. A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode, with Other Ancient and Modern Ballads and Songs Relating to this Celebrated Yeoman. Edited by John Mathew Gutch, F.S.A. 2. Robin Hood: a Fragment by the late Robert Southey, and Caroline Southey', The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, vol. LXXXVI (1847), pp. 122-38
• [Stead, Philip John]. 'Stock Characters', The Times Literary Supplement (23 Sep. 1949), pp. 609-10
• Vries, Jan de. 'Robin Hood en Mijn Here van Mallegem', Tijdsschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, vol. 36 (1917), pp. 11-54.

Dated but of interest

• Coote, H. C. 'The Origin of the Robin Hood Epos', The Folk-Lore Journal, vol. III (1885), pp. 44-52. Discusses the Gest of Robyn Hode to demonstrate "the disagreeable fact [...] that communism was publicly advocated in this country in the reign of that too glorious monarch Edward III". Crude and biased as it is, Coote's paper in essence anticipates the views of Hilton and Keen in his younger years.
• Hole, Christina. English Folk-Heroes (London; New York; Toronto; Sydney, 1948), pp. ?-?
  • Hole, Christina. English Folk-Heroes (New York, 1992), pp. ?-?
• Orange, James. History and Antiquities of Nottingham, in which are Exhibited the Various Institutions, Manners, Customs, Arts, and Manufactures of the People; their Social and Domestic Habits; Civil and Political Conditions, under Every Successive Government, from their Conquests by the Normans, Danes, Saxons, Romans, and Early British Dependency, down to the Present Time: Forming a Condensed but Comprehensive English as well as Local History, Chronologically Arranged (London; Nottingham, 1840), vol. I, pp. 202-224 (Book VII, Ch. VII), "Robin Hood".

Other criticism

Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. The Robin Hood Handbook: The Outlaw in History, Myth and Legend (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2006). This book consists of four parts, three appendices and a bibliography. The first part, 'The Legends of Robin Hood and his Merry Men' (pp. 3-112) consists of 402 numbered paragraphs which the compiler thinks together perhaps give "the most complete version of the legendary life of Robin Hood". The sources are the half dozen earliest ballads and "a plethora of other literature, both ancient and modern". The identity of the modern sources is not revealed and no source references are given for any of the 402 paragraphs. The body of the work presents a synthetic narrative whose usefulness is severely compromised because its relationship to its sources is entirely opaque. It is much to be regretted that the compiler did not choose to include source references. Part two, 'An A–Z of People and Places' (pp. 115-228) would have been a very useful encyclopedia of the Robin Hood tradition if source references had been added for each entry. All sorts of minor characters are given their own entries, but we are never (or only incidentally) told in which source(s) they figure, so readers without extensive knowledge of the tradition have no way of knowing which of the characters and incidents treated in the encyclopedia are found in, say, nineteenth century children's books and which are from late medieval ballads. Part three, 'Source Texts' (pp. 231-403), consists of the texts of 21 Robin Hood ballads, the ballad of Robyn and Gandeleyn, and a wordlist. The manner in which they were edited is entirely opaque. Three useful appendixes consist of maps, a chronology, and a film list.

Notes