Conference Review: The International Association for Robin Hood Studies, “Outlaws in Context” (2015)

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies, Tenth Biennial Meeting: “Outlaws in Context” (2015)

Reviewed by Valerie B. Johnson (valerie.johnson@lmc.gatech.edu)

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies meets biennially, alternating between North America and Europe; the subject of this review is the tenth meeting, “Outlaws in Context,” held 30 June – 2 July in Doncaster, UK. Doncaster is in South Yorkshire, and the area is considered prime “Robin Hood Country” due to local references in a number of early ballads, abundant references to Robin Hood in local site names, and a rich tradition of highwaymen (real and romanticized) through the 18^th century.

Context:

“Outlaws in Context” offered seven sessions, with no concurrent panels to split the attention of attendees. Nineteen papers were presented, and enthusiastic conversations followed each panel. Like many organizations, the IARHS encourages the participation of graduate students alongside seasoned academics; however, the IARHS is also open to independent scholars or enthusiasts, and several routinely attend and present at the biennial conferences. This open approach mirrors the history of Robin Hood scholarship, and encourages a diversity of voices in discussions.

The European meetings of the IARHS are generally smaller and more intimate conferences than North American counterparts. Consequently, “Outlaws in Context” represents organizer Lesley Coote’s choice to replicate the success of past European meetings, such as Gregynog in 2007 and Beverley in 2011, by selecting a residential conference center as the site of the meeting. European meetings of the IARHS thus often qualify as “boutique conferences,” since their small size and centralized location ensures that all attendees can meet and speak to each other within formal and informal settings. This allows a rich exchange of ideas in various stages of development, and genuinely collaborative discourse. The North American meetings are often larger and by sheer size limit the depth of casual conversations even though they balance this through increased opportunities. (A notable exception to this trend was the 2013 meeting in St. Louis.) The great value of the small residential conference center is the natural flow and development of the conversation. A discussion begun over breakfast can flow into panel presentations and questions, continue during lunch, and further resonate in afternoon conversations.

Outlaws:

Presenters and audience members were able to make connections between papers throughout the conference. Because Robin Hood is a subject well suited to historical, literary, and media study, the range of attendees is typically quite broad: medievalists are the largest contingent by far, with eighteenth century studies and modern media studies rounding out the remainder. The IARHS is not limited to members of the academy alone; at any meeting, independent scholars, dedicated enthusiasts, and casual fans are present, offering a more inclusive model for scholarly conferences of the future.

“Outlaws in Context”:

The conference theme sought to showcase the increasing diversity of topics within Robin Hood studies. When the historian J.C. Holt published Robin Hood (1982), few scholars interested in Robin Hood wrote on topics outside history or historiography, and the overwhelming majority of scholarship focused on the late medieval / early modern materials. Holt’s work, however, provided such a thorough foundation in the historical facts of the tradition that it accomplished what few monographs researched and written for academic audiences can hope to do: it was eagerly read outside the academy. Over the next decade Holt’s Robin Hood was cited as inspiration and research by novelists (such as Robin McKinley, author of The Outlaws of Sherwood) and filmmakers (such as Richard Carpenter, Robin of Sherwood) who sought out historical context and details of the tradition to better situate their own interpretations of the tradition.

Consequently, “Outlaws in Context” sorted papers as much by common material history and shared textual connections as by thematic topics. For newcomers, this meant that context (historical, thematic, genre, etc.) and shared vocabulary generally built over the course of the presentations. Question and answer sessions, therefore, rarely had to address basic concerns and were able to develop the discussions in greater depth than isolated panels or papers addressing the Robin Hood tradition would be able to accomplish. More crowded meetings of the IARHS do offer a broader depth and range of papers, but – due to the size which permits such variety – the conversations are necessarily limited since not all audience members have equal chances to attend all the panels.

The conference opened, for example, with a pair of keynotes addressing two radically different views of Robin Hood within the context and restrictions of television programming: Mikee Deloney examined parallels between Robin Hood and Jamie Fraser, hero of the popular Outlander television series (a connection made in the source novels, but developed in more depth by cinematography’s shared visual vocabulary); Michael Easton provided a discussion of the writers and directors of the immensely influential 1950s television series The Adventures of Robin Hood. The shared medium of television allowed the group to dig into the appeal of outlawry, whether for a fictional character like Fraser or the writers and directors of the television series – several of whom were Americans blacklisted by the McCarthy investigations. Outlander and The Adventures of Robin Hood both adjust the expectations and requirements of outlawry to fit the needs of their genres, since Outlander is adapting a novel and furthermore a cable production running for a full hour. Outlander’s 16 episodes per season pales in comparison to Adventures of Robin Hood’s seasonal average of 39 episodes, which were produced serially and loosely adapt traditional stories and adventures, but without the deliberate narrative arc of the Outlander series.

From my perspective, the shared keynote address signals several important moves in Robin Hood studies – as well as larger issues in medieval studies and academia. First, and most importantly, is the increasing interest in visual representations of the tradition among scholars of literature and history. Scholars in these fields have long noted Robin Hood’s dynamic visual presence as a key factor in the tradition’s ongoing appeal on stage and screen, but study of television programs has never featured as prominently as cinematic offerings. Perhaps this reluctance by medievalists to take up television stories (proportionally to our embrace of cinema) is the fault of serial narratives and the sheer bulk of material: the 1950s television series, for example, produced 39 episodes per year for four years, and many of those episodes function more effectively as standalone stories, with different directors, writers, editors, and actors contributing to the viewing experience. Fragmentation is also at play in Outlander, because a portion of the appeal of the male lead derives from the character’s resonance with Robin Hood – but since the character’s name is not Robin Hood, James Fraser’s connections to the tradition must be largely meta-textual, with brief and disconnected references that do not touch on the most obvious symbolism of the tradition. These references depend on common knowledge, even tropes, about Robin Hood; but they also depend on the audience’s flexibility and willingness to adapt Robin Hood to many different contexts. Medievalists, of course, often participate in these conversations – but often we return to source material, a move that often disadvantages modern stories and histories in favor of those originating in the Middle Ages. Clearly, a portion of this is due to specialist bias: a medievalist will naturally privilege her own field over modern television studies! However, these stories are not being told for medievalists, and only incidentally to medievalists: we can join a conversation and contribute fruitfully, or derail the discussion by insisting on medieval origins for material that has embraced the medieval and also moved in medievalism, neo-medievalism, and at times outright modernism.

The various panels and discussions in “Outlaws in Context” shows that unity, for these stories, is derived through common factors of the narratives, audience desire, and distribution of media: consistency of transmission times and channels is a factor which cinematic scholarship does not need to consider at all. Yet these concerns are all adaptations, or translations, of issues that have informed the gradual accretion of the core content that we now consider the greater Robin Hood tradition – and the stories developed out of these material contexts of audiences and storytellers. This encourages localization, and to some extent fragmentation: this conference shows that any discussion of “Robin Hood” has to be very careful to localize and specialize the conversation, since there is so little that is shared in common across the broad range of places, times, texts, and references. Sometimes all that makes a Robin Hood text is the name – or the act of extra-juridical resistance to unjust authority. This broadening of who and what Robin Hood can “be” is, I think, representative not only of the increasing options available for modern audiences, but increasing acknowledgment by scholars that multiplicity of meaning is not only possible but vital.

Valerie B. Johnson

Georgia Institute of Technology

 

Dr. Who, Season 9, Episodes 5 and 6

Doctor Who, Season 9, episode 5, “The Girl Who Died,” written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat and directed by Ed Bazalgette and episode 6, “The Woman Who Lived,” written by Catherine Tregenna  and directed by Ed Bazalgette, originally aired October 17 and 24, 2015.

Reviewed by Usha Vishnuvajjala (uvishnuv@indiana.edu)

 “The Girl Who Died” and “The Woman Who Lived” form a two-episode story arc which centers on a Viking girl named Ashildr, played by Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones fame. This second foray into the Middle Ages in fourteen months is notable; since its reboot in 2005, Doctor Who has given the Middle Ages a wide berth. During the first seven seasons, showrunners set episodes in Pompeii, in Shakespeare’s London, and in a twenty-second-century acid-pumping factory located in a revamped fourteenth-century castle, but not a single episode in any part of the Middle Ages. That changed last year, with the episode “Robot of Sherwood,” set in in “1190-ish,” and this season, various medievalisms were sprinkled throughout the first four episodes, leading to “The Girl Who Died,” the fifth of the season.

In “The Girl Who Died,” visions of Odin appear in the sky, telling villagers what to do. The Doctor and his travelling companion Clara see them too, and soon discover that they are created by an alien spaceship from the future which is harvesting fighters from the village. This is a recurring treatment of history and legend for Doctor Who; historical people really do see Odin, Robin Hood, the eruption at Pompeii, witches in Shakespeare’s London, Agatha Christie’s disappearance, and so on, but the Doctor uncovers the driving forces behind such apparitions and events, which always turn out to be extraterrestrial. In the case of “The Girl Who Died,” this has the effect of allowing two versions of history to exist simultaneously: the experience of the people inhabiting the Viking village is consistent with a version of mythology, while the Doctor’s cynical view of such beliefs is also supported by the apparatus behind such experience.

The Doctor and Clara find themselves on the outskirts of a Viking village—time and place unspecified, but revealed in the following episode to be the 9th century—when the Doctor lands the TARDIS to wipe the remnants of a space-spider off his boot in the grass. As often happens, the TARDIS has taken them to a place where their intervention is needed to prevent an alien massacre of humans. On being ambushed by a group of Viking soldiers with swords, the Doctor is irritated, shouting, “No, no, not Vikings. I’m not in the mood for Vikings!” suggesting that he has had plenty of interactions with the Middle Ages off-screen (also suggested earlier this season when he believed himself to be dying and went to the twelfth century for a final weeks-long party). When he and Clara are brought, in chains, to the Vikings’ village, the Doctor tries to escape by claiming to be Odin in human form, only to be interrupted by Odin’s face appearing in the sky. Clara and Ashildr, the daughter of one of the soldiers, are among those beamed up to “Valhalla,” which is actually a spaceship in which Vikings are vaporized by a laser so their energy can be harnessed and drunk by the extraterrestrial “Odin.”

When the Doctor’s creative low-tech method for helping the Vikings defeat the alien spaceship goes slightly awry and leads to Ashildr’s death, the Doctor uses a small device to bring her back to life, which has the side effect of making her immortal. After giving her a second device for the companion of her choice, the Doctor and Clara leave the village. When the Doctor encounters her again in “The Woman Who Lived,” it is 1651 and she is a highway robber known as “The Knightmare” who calls herself “Me,” and doesn’t recognize the name Ashildr when the Doctor uses it.

This second episode, despite its postmedieval setting, contains more interesting commentary on the medieval period. “The Girl Who Died” is much more a vehicle for furthering or revisiting various parts of Doctor Who history and mythology (with plenty of inside jokes for longtime fans), while “The Woman Who Lived” is as much about Ashildr’s long life through the Middle Ages as it is about who she has become by 1651. This is poignantly foreshadowed by the final shot of “The Girl Who Died,” in which Ashildr is depicted standing on a cliff as a camera circles her slowly and shows the passage of time in the movement of stars, constellations, and the mountains behind her. The camera begins its circle on her contented face, and ends on her troubled one.

By the time we encounter her in the following episode, Ashildr has lived so long that she sometimes reads her own diaries for entertainment, because she has “had 800 years of adventure” and cannot remember most of what has happened to her. This provides the opportunity for the Doctor and, therefore, the viewer, to learn about her life in the Middle Ages, including founding a leper colony, becoming a medieval queen and faking her own death to hide her immortality, recovering from the Black Death but losing her children to it and swearing never to have any more, and curing an entire village of scarlet fever and narrowly escaping being drowned as a witch by “ungrateful peasants” as a result. In a flashback reminiscent of Virgina Woolf’s Orlando, Ashildr is shown fighting in the battle of Agincourt, which she describes as “my first stint as a man,” with “The Knightmare” being the most recent.

These flashbacks, and Ashildr’s narration of them from her vantage point in 1651, offer an account of the Middle Ages as impossibly long and varied. Ashildr has experienced wealth and power, but also poverty and loss; she has both killed and saved more people than she can remember; she has lived as both a man and a woman. The village that she once loved so much that she chose to stay there and die rather than leave “the sky, the hills, the sea, [and] the people” has become so distant that she is taken aback when the Doctor mentions it by name. Although Doctor Who is generally more invested in the experience and philosophy of the time-traveler than in the specific attributes of the times and places the Doctor visits, it is always concerned with shifting perceptions of history—both the fictional time-traveler’s and the viewers’. As with last season’s “Robot of Sherwood,” the long arc of “The Girl Who Died” and “The Woman Who Lived” push back against the idea of a singular medieval period. Instead, they depict Ashildr’s Middle Ages as a long period of change, development, and variation, so long that the ninth century is unrecognizable by the seventeenth, even to a woman who lived through it.

Usha Vishnuvajjala

Indiana University 

Knight: Reading Robin Hood

Stephen Knight, Reading Robin Hood, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.

Reviewed by Sabina Rahman (srah2881@uni.sydney.edu.au)

Reading Robin Hood stands as Stephen Knight’s third book devoted to the outlaw hero, preceded by Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (1994) and Robin Hood: a Mythic Biography (2003), and demonstrates some deviation from these earlier works by containing a stronger theoretical focus. While A Complete Study was a wonderfully detailed overview of the myth and A Mythic Biography traced the manner in which the myth changed and evolved and how it operated politically, this book situates itself much more in the Greenwood gloaming as it attempts to address points of unclarity in the outlaw tradition and associated scholarship. In his usual meticulous style, Knight draws together disparate threads of scholarship within this rhizomatic field of study, his distinct voice containing not only the attention to detail that one has come to expect from him but also a clear and unabashed enthusiasm for the subject matter. Though the book weaves in and out of eras and discussions, because the nature of the texts and discussions cannot be neatly constrained by either of those features, it is split into eight discrete chapters.

The first three chapters focus on what Knight refers to as the 'enigmas of uncertainty arising from the early materials' (p. 8), with the first chapter discussing the nature of the early ballads. Beginning with an analysis of works by H. J. Chaytor, Clanchy, Walter Ong, Marianna Boerch (amongst others), Knight builds a foundation for examining oral traditions and cultures, a scholarly approach which he argues tends towards an oversimplification of a complex cultural field as ‘writing [was] a version of speaking’ in medieval times (p. 15). The discussion encompasses the fetishisation of literacy and literary products in scholarship, with David C. Fowler’s claim of orality being a frayed and decayed form of literacy. Knight uses Richard Green and his work to demonstrate the surviving powers of oral material, and continues to posit the Robin Hood material as an exemplar of an alternative model as they are from their earliest incarnations  ‘both oral and literary, and maintain that complexity to the present, with varying intensities of an instrumental and context-driven kind’ (p. 16). The discussion that Robin Hood stories are grounded in songs and chants, and a compelling argument for the popular and even usual orality of the Robin Hood texts through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (the tales being told via song or performance of some sort, and the capability of the broadside ballads being sung) all lead Knight to the conclusion that the printing of the material did not silence the oral and performative tendency of these tales (p. 25). Indeed, there is a dialectical interrelationship of orality and literacy at the core of the Robin Hood material.

The second chapter traces some Scottish connections to the tradition, identifying a significant gap in the scholarship field where, though there is an acknowledged recurrent element of Scottish involvement with the tradition, there is almost no critical engagement in the area. In an interesting move, Knight uses post-colonial critical discourse to engage with the texts, despite Scotland not being a colony but rather a negotiated ally and federate, and discusses how colonial implants may interact with native traditions, and how they may ‘in turn, and in return, influence the culture of the colonising power itself’ (p. 37). The chapter examines Robin Hood in Scotland and Rabbie Hood in England, noting that the nature of this traffic is not one way,  and that there is indeed evidence of an interrelationship in these outlaw myths. There are some keen observations in the Scottish relocation of the Robin Hood myth through play-games in that region, and his appropriation as the date and season of the play-games change from the traditional May in England to a winter’s December day in Scotland, thus changing the figure in question by ‘detaching him [...] from the strong natural symbolism of the English Whitsun practices [...] and making him a figure of year-round urban harmony‘ (p. 40). The significance of Robin Hood changes as he is entwined with the Rabbie Hood myth, the Scottish reading of the character differing greatly from the English, especially in terms of national significance, a point that Knight traces in some depth with the available texts.

The final chapter in this section addresses the sources and avatars of “A Gest of Robin Hood”, and argues that the Gest draws substantially on the late medieval tradition of sub-chivalric romance, especially as this is found in Sir Launfal, Gamelyn, and the ‘King and Subject’ ballads, and there is some significant space given to the argument that the “Gest” relies on the narrative of Fulk Fitz-Warren. The discussion necessitates a re-ordering of the conventional time lines of the plays and the ballads, suggesting that “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne” and the plays “Robin Hood and the Potter” and “Robin Hood and the Friar” all predate “Gest”, thus using the narratives of these texts to glean greater understanding of the older texts. The argument for the alternate chronology is highly plausible, the evidence sound; however, as Knight concedes, there is room for scholarly dispute on the matter.

The second section of the book attempts to address the lack of clarity in structures and interrelationships of a considerable number of texts, beginning with an analysis of the broadside ballads, their dates, types and sociopolitical meanings.  The broadside ballads are an aspect of Robin Hood studies that were once considered central but have lacked any significant critical work in the last few decades, and this chapter is steeped in a desire to regenerate interest in this area. Knight creates a framework for a revival of these studies by loosely placing them in two categories: anti authority and celebratory, where the outlaws’ skills and traditions are celebrated. There is also a meticulous attempt to sort the broadsides chronologically, creating a valuable tool for those future scholars. This chapter blends seamlessly into the fifth with a continuation of these intricacies of the broadside ballads in a more Romantic setting, and discusses also the garland traditions thriving in the eighteenth century. Knight also unearths evidence of the old play tradition showing signs of survival in festivals in high summer, a displacement of the early summer festivals which had featured Robin Hood play-games. This chapter also contains a discussion of Joseph Ritson, his history and his works, acknowledging the vast impact he had on this field, though he does not participate in nor comment upon the reconstruction of Robin Hood as a Romantic figure. For him, Robin ‘displayed a spirit of freedom and independence’ (p. 108). Knight also neatly pulls together the Romantic Robin from his appearances in works by John Keats, John Hamilton Reynolds and Leigh Hunt before analysing Thomas Love Peacock’s Maid Marian novella which maintains and adds to this Romantic discourse while adding political elements through satire. This Romantic Robin Hood remains an ‘available and potent part of the outlaw repertoire’ (p. 139) and has thrived and flourished to current depictions from these roots, which Knight traces further in the sixth chapter, and the re-formation of Robin Hood in poetry and prose in the nineteenth century. This chapter sees Robin settling into the ‘patriotic, masculine, leaderly role of the mid-Victorian popular novel’ (p. 143) through a study of Robin Hood: A Tale of Olden Time (anonymous), Ivanhoe (Walter Scott) and the Maid Marian novella mentioned above (Peacock). There is also an exploration of Robin Hood being brought to mainstream audiences, the first evidence of which is cited as Pierce Egan the Younger’s serialised rendition of the tales, and the lasting influence of Howard Pyle as the impact and importance of his work ‘was to a large degree visual’ (p. 179). Robin Hood had not been a popular subject for artists, not as much as Arthur and the medieval knights, so the illustrations in these books led to a revival in artistic interest, a discussion which Knight engages in.

The final section of the book works across all materials, from thematic viewpoints, content, form and reception, and discusses the multiplicity of portrayals of Maid Marian, and her changing role in millennial modernity. The chapter traces the history of Marian in the tradition, from Robin et Marion c. 1283, which, as Knight previously notes, is not really part of the outlaw cycle at all despite the tantalising similarities in name and date. However there are some links to the blending of the two traditions within the play-games, and this is explored briefly. There is also some discussion of the eighteenth century opera with the uninspired title of Robin Hood: An Opera, and other plays during that time in which Marian began to emerge as a standard character, though as Knight states, ‘in general, the eighteenth-century did not find Marian an inspiring figure’ (p. 198). It is in the nineteenth century that Marian begins to take a larger role, even given the title of a Robin Hood story for the first time (the aforementioned Maid Marian by Peacock) and there is an emerging recognition of her as a partner of Robin, an element that grew stronger in twentieth-century film and TV. Knight traces this figure through the twentieth century, examining her evolution on the screen, particularly in line with feminist thought, adding that surging interest in the role of women will give Marian ‘renewed power’ (p. 198).

This final section also provides the model of a rhizomatic structure as a way of understanding a tradition which has ‘been opposed to, even ostracised by, canonical tradition which is linear, uniform or, in their terms, arboreal’ (p. 9). The usual model of canonisation of literature, Knight argues, does not work with Robin Hood: ‘it has long been established that there is a different formation in this long-loved and highly dynamic cultural myth’ (p. 229).  This chapter, possibly my favourite of the book, addresses pedagogical issues and triumphs that Knight encountered with Robin Hood and his surprising and perplexing avoidance of being pinned down. There is large array of material here and Knight bounces from one to another like a pinball, his excitement palpable with every new encounter. With the excitement, there is also confusion, maybe even frustration, at the nature of this hero, this myth, whose ‘multiformed nature is rooted in the contextual ground itself’ (p. 254). It is due to this that Knight concludes with the caution that commentators will need a ‘volatile capacity to comprehend - meaning both understand and hold onto - the continuing rhizomaticity of Robin Hood’ (p. 254).

This book could, perhaps, be read as a call to arms. Knight begins by addressing the idea that the Robin Hood tradition is remarkably open to new materials and ideas in a way that seemingly comparable medieval legends, such as King Arthur, and Tristan and Isolde for instance, are not (p. 1). There is an uncertain and anarchic nature to the myth, bred perhaps from the manner in which Robin Hood material was not culturally treasured and did not undergo the venerative process of literary criticism of seemingly comparable medieval material that began around the turn of the twentieth century. While Joseph Ritson began this process in 1795 when he published his edition of the ballads and Francis James  Child provided the 'finest piece of early outlaw scholarship' (p. 3), Reading Robin Hood makes it clear that the process has not yet scratched a considerable surface. 

Scholars and interested parties may notice some slight overlap in the material. The chapter on the Scottish myth is essentially “Rabbie Hood: The Development of the English Outlaw Myth in Scotland”, published out of conference proceedings in Bandit Territories.[1]  The inclusion of the chapter is appropriate here too, however, as some repetition of material is necessary in order to tie the threads of the book’s thesis together, to demonstrate the fertility of the scholarly lands available.

This is not a book of answers. This book is said to be Knight’s final book on Robin Hood and in keeping with the volatile, evolving nature of the myth on which he writes, Knight does not provide the final word on the subject matter. Rather, he has, via a neat trilogy of books, provided future scholars the means by which to descend into the forest and see the trees.

Sabina Rahman

University of Sydney

---

[1] Helen Phillips (ed.), Bandit Territories: British Outlaw Traditions, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008.