Ballad studies and criticism

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-12. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2022-05-17.

Significant

• Bessinger, Jr, Jess Balsor 1952a
• 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.
• Chandler, John H. 'Robin Hood: Development of a Popular Hero' (2006), at: The Robin Hood Project: a Robbins Library Digital Project (University of Rochester)
• Clawson, William Hall; Langton, H. H., gen. ed. The Gest of Robin Hood (University of Toronto Studies, Philological [& Literature] Series, [extra volume]) ([Toronto], 1909)
• 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.
• Evans, Ruth, ed.; Fulton, Helen, ed.; Matthews, David, ed. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff, 2006)
• Flügel, Ewald. 'Zur Chronologie der Englischen Balladen', Anglia, vol. XXI (1899), pp. 312-58. Virtually exhaustive chronological annotated listing of printings of Child ballads, preceded by a discussion of missing glosses and other minor shortcomings of the ESPB from a philological point of view.
• Fox, Adam. 'Remembering the Past in Early Modern England: Oral and Written Tradition', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 9 (1999), pp. 233-56.
• Fricke, Richard. Die Robin-Hood-Balladen: ein Beiträg zum Studium der englischen Volksdichtung (Braunschweig, 1883).
  • Fricke, Richard. 'Die Robin-Hood-Balladen: ein Beiträg zum Studium der englischen Volksdichtung', Archiv für das Stiudium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen, vol. 69 (1883), pp. 241-344
• 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
• Green, Richard Firth. 'Violence in the Early Robin Hood Ballads', in: Meyerson, Mark D., ed.; Thiery, Daniel, ed.; Falk, Oren, ed. A Great Effusion of Blood? Interpreting Medieval Violence (Tornoto; Buffalo; London, 2004), pp. 268-86.
• 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.
• 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).
• Harlan-Haughey, Sarah. 'Forest Law Through the Looking Glass: Distortions of the Forest Charter in the Outlaw Fiction of Late Medieval England', William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal. vol. 25 (2016), pp. 549-89
• Johnson, Valerie B. The Legend of Robin Hood: From Medieval Ballad to Modern Novel (unpublished B.A. honors thesis; Northampton, Massachusetts: Smith College, 2002)
• 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
• 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: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1994). A study which pays more attention to post-Medieval developments than most prior works on the outlaw tradition (presumably this circumstance suggested the book's immodest subtitle). The book is an important work on the Robin Hood tradition, even if there are many points where I believe a more detailed analysis of the evidence must lead one to disagree with Knight. I find it unfortunate that there should be so many disparaging remarks about the work of Knight's predecessors in the field. It is largely thanks to a good half dozen historians that Robin Hood has become an accepted part of university curricula, but Knight writes them off as ""empiricists" and often denies the validity of the conclusions they reached without discussing the evidence in any detail. Neither is it, for instance, entirely fair when Knight claims that before this book there did not exist "any serious literary study" (p. viii) of the outlaw tradition or that previous writers have in most cases failed to appreciate the complexity of early modern Robin Hood folk festivities (pp. 99-100). At times, one gets the impression that Knight earnestly believes Robin Hood studies did only really start with him.
• Knight, Stephen, ed. Robin Hood: Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (Cambridge, 1999)
• 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, 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
• Lawrence, William Witherle. Medieval Story and the Beginnings of the Social Ideals of English-Speaking People (New York, 1911); "Lecture VII—The Ballads of Robin Hood" (pp. 169-94); also see p. 168
• 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
• Nagy, Joseph Falaky. 'The Paradoxes of Robin Hood', Folklore, vol. 91 (1980), pp. 198-210
• 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)
• 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
• 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, 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. '"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
• 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)
• Rouse, Andrew C. 'The Folk Song Lyric – From Classlessness to Classriddenness', Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 9 (2003), pp. 209-221
• Steadman, Jr., John Marcellus. 'The Dramatization of the Robin Hood Ballads', Modern Philology, vol. 17 (1919), pp. 9-23
• Tardiff, Richard 1983a
• Taylor. Joseph. '"Me longeth sore to Bernysdale": Centralization, Resistance, and the Bare Life of the Greenwood in A Gest of Robyn Hode', Modern Philology, vol. 110 (2013), pp. 313-39
• Thompson, Kimberly Ann. 'The Late Medieval Robin Hood: Good Yeomanry and Bad Performances', in: Potter, Lois, ed.; Calhoun, Joshua, ed. Images of Robin Hood: Medieval to Modern (Newark, 2008), pp. 102-110
• 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
• 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'.
• Vries, Jan de. 'Robin Hood en Mijn Here van Mallegem', Tijdsschrift voor Nederlandsche Taal- en Letterkunde, vol. 36 (1917), pp. 11-54
• Wadiak, Walter. 'What shall these bowes do?': The Gift and its Violence in A Gest of Robyn Hode', Exemplaria, vol. 24 (2012), pp. 238-59.
• 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.

Of interest

• 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)
• Stockton, Edwin L. 'Archery in the Ballads', Journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, vol. 5 (1962), pp. 40-44.

Dated yet interesting

• Barry, Edw. Thèse de Littérature sur les Vicissitudes et les Transformations du Cycle Populaire de Robin Hood. Université de France. Académie de Paris, Faculté des Lettres (Paris, 1832).
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—No. I', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 169-71.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. II', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 238-40.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. III', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 241-45.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. IV', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 273-75.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. V', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 301-304.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. VI', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 313-16.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. VII, [pt. 1]', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 321-22.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. VII, [pt. 2]', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 342-43.
• C., A. 'The Old English Ballads.—Robin Hood.—No. VIII', The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1838), pp. 369-72.
• 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".

Not seen

• Greenway, John. 'Aunt Molly Jackson and Robin Hood: A Study in Folk Re-Creation', Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 69 (1956), pp. 23-38
• Haworth, Peter. English Hymns and Ballads and Other Studies in Popular Literature (Oxford, 1927), pp. 30-45: 'The Robin Hood Ballads'.

Brief mention

• G., J.M. 'Christ's Hospital – Old Songs once Popular there', Notes & Queries, Series 1, vol. I (1850), pp. 421-22; the author, almost certainly John Mathew Gutch, mentions his searches for Robin Hood ballads at the library of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
• Ker, W.P.; Chambers, R.W., annotator. Form and Style in Poetry: Lectures and Notes (London, 1928), pp. 34, 37. Cites (p. 34) the opening line of the Gest as a typical example of a minstrel's introductory tag. P. 37: the Gest, the Danish Long Ballad of Marsk Stig, and one of the Spanish ballads on the Infantes de Lara are examples of "the compiling of separate songs into one poem".
• Moore, John Robert. 'Omission of the Central Action in English Ballads', Modern Philology, vol. XIII (1914), pp. 391-406; see pp. 394, 396, 397, 401, 404.
• Pound, Louise. 'The Southwestern Cowboy Songs and the English and Scottish Popular Ballads', Modern Philology, vol. XI (1913), pp. 195-207; see pp. 195, 202.

Ballads