Howdy kids! Welcome back to The Book Report.
Before I go anywhere, I should tell you that preorders for the Mythoi: Birth graphic novel went on sale yesterday. You can download all the issues for free, but the graphic novel has some great goodies that you’ll otherwise miss. Besides, I like holding a book in my hands better than viewing it on a screen.

Last weekend Ridley Scott — a favorite director of mine — released a new take on the Robin Hood legend, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Check out the trailer:

This new version was entertaining, to be sure, but I felt something was missing. It just didn’t quite work as the movie it wanted to be. Sgt. Angle talks about it better than I can in yesterday’s post, and besides, I’m not here to talk movies, I’m here to talk books.

The name Robin Hood first appeared in print in England around 1228C.E. in the rolls of the English Justice system. Robinhood, Robehod, Hobbehod, and Robunhod are all names used in criminal trials, though there is much agreement that these names did not refer to the same man. In 1605 British Secretary of State Robert Cecil branded Guy Fawkes and his accomplices “Robin Hoods”.
The first clear literary reference to Robin Hood appears in William Langland’s allegorical narrative poem Piers Plowman, written in the mid– to late-14th Century: “I know not perfectly the Paternoster as the priest sings it/But I know the rhymes of Robin Hood. (translated from Middle English)” This suggests that by then there already was a literary tradition of Robin Hood, though whether it was determined fact or fiction we have no idea.
The earliest existing ballad of Robin Hood is “Robin Hood and the Monk”, written around 1450C.E. The first printed collection of stories is “The Gest of Robyn Hode” (c. 1475).
Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel Ivanhoe, is one of the more influential pieces of literature to shape how modern audiences view Robin Hood. It is because of this work that we tend to associate Robin Hood with the name Locksley. A key theme in Scott’s novel is the Saxon-Norman conflict in England, for which Robin Hood became famously associated with. For the first time, Robin Hood is placed as a contemporary of King Richard I (The Lion-heart), most works placed him two centuries later. Robin’s feat of splitting a competitor’s arrow with one of his own appears for the first time in the novel as well.

One of the other major influences on modern audiences was Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, written in 1883. The book was actually a compilation of many of the old Robin Hood ballads, reworked into one long narrative and illustrated for children. This book was the culmination of many other authors’ attempts to romanticize the outlaw, creating more of a philanthropist rogue than highwayman and brigand. In fact, the Douglas Fairbanks silent film, Errol Flynn’s technicolor masterpiece, the Disney film, and the Mel Brooks spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights, all owe much of their imagery and characterization more from Pyle’s book than anywhere else. Though I suppose Mel Brooks owes his imagery and characterization to Pyle second hand, through the films he’s spoofing.

My favorite piece of Robin Hood literature breaks from tradition almost entirely. In the 1991 novel Sherwood, author Parke Godwin sets the story even earlier than the Richard I tradition, during the invasion and invents after William the Conqueror in 1066. Rather than setting Robin Hood at the middle of the Saxon-Norman conflict, Godwin places him at the beginning of it.

I think this change from the typical Robin Hood story is effective for a couple of reasons. Godwin writes the characters well, he presents the conflict leading to the emergence of Robin as an outlaw in an intelligent way, and the story itself is a damn good yarn. But really, Godwin could’ve given us almost the exact same story without breaking from the traditional Robin Hood time period. But breaking from the tradition to set the story in the middle of the 11th Century allows Godwin to really highlight the political and religious differences of the English and the French-speaking Normans.
Prior to the Norman invasion, the English political system was a kind of democratic monarchy called Witenagemot. In this system, the land-owning earls would meet in public council with the king to discuss important policy, such as taxes. They had the power to ‘depose’ an unpopular king, and generally, monarchs were elected into power by the earls as well. These meetings allowed fluidity into the government. If harvests were bad during a particular year, the earls could agree that taxes should be lower, so they could afford to buy more grain from elsewhere.
After William I conquered England, he did away with the Witan and established the much more rigid feudalism the Normans inherited from France. For the English, it was as if any kind of common sense was removed from the law. Taxes, or any other public policy, shifted at the whim of the King.
Religiously, although England had been Christianized, there was still strong ties to the land, in part due to vestiges of Celtic druidism hanging on in the countryside, where the influence of the Church was not as strong. The Norman invasion, backed by pope Alexander II, brought with it stronger ties to the Church.
This is the historical setting into which Godwin inserts his Robin Hood story. The main character is Edward Aelredson, nicknamed Robin by his mother after the forest lord Robin Goodfellow (Shakespeare’s Puck). He is a small countryside landowner whose life is turned completely upside-down by the Norman invasion. All the mainstays of Robin Hood literature (excepting Richard I and King John, of course) make appearances, with the Norman Ralf Fitz-gerald providing a perfect foil for Robin as the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Another fun aspect of the book is that Godwin writes in many of the traditional Robin Hood stories, but makes interesting changes, so that you almost get the sense that you are reading the stories that inspired the legends. Like any legend, the details gradually embellish over time to become the ballads we know and love.

What we end up with is a Robin Hood novel different from any other, yet still feels familiar. It is full of politics and violence, but also never abandons the values of love and family that each character — whether they be English or Norman — holds dear. Sherwood is an excellently written, thoroughly entertaining read about a man willing to remain unbowed and tell a king to his face that he’s wrong.
And if you really enjoy it, Parke Godwin wrote a sequel, titled Robin and the King, which expands the history and themes covered in the first book, culminating in the Charter of Liberties, an agreement by Henry I which was the inspiration for the Magna Carta.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_