Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression, and Justice

Cambridge (UK): D.S. Brewer. Fine. 2000. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket, as issued) [a nice clean, as-new book]. Revised versions of 22 papers that were presented at a conference entitled "Playing with Transgression: Cultural Transformations of Robin Hood," held at the University of Rochester (New York) in 1997. The editor states in his introductory essay: "The essays that make up the present volume confirm that, despite the charisma, familiarity, and historical veneer that surround the legend, there is no single truth that stands behind Robin Hood, nor any strictlly delimitable field of study that surrounds him. Robin Hood is not so much the name of a single, coherent figure as the cue for a story waiting to happen, a plot open to the appropriations of writers, artists, and impresarios of all sorts who draft him to work in their own interests. Yet even in the often sober, rarefied world of academia the elements of playfulness and transgression remain central concerns: in all periods and in all times, Robin Hood seems to entail the crossing of boundaries, or the reversal of customary hierarchies." (Translation: this ain't your grandpa's Robin Hood.) .