Where and what was Robin Hood? Why is an outlaw from fourteenth century
England still a hero today, with films, festivals and songs dedicated to
his living memory?
This book explores the mysteries, the historical evidence, and the
trajectory that led to centuries of village festivals around Mayday and
the green space of nature unconquered by the forces in power. Great
revolutionaries including William Morris adopted Robin as hero,
children's books offered many versions, and Robin entered modern popular
culture with cheap novels, silent films and comics.
There, in the world of popular culture, Robin Hood continues to holds
unique and secure place. The "bad-good" hero of pulp urban fiction of
the 1840s-50s, and more important, the Western outlaw who thwarts the
bankers in pulps, films, and comics, is essentially Robin Hood. So are
Zorro, the Cisco Kid, and countless Robin Hood knockoff characters in
various media.
Robin Hood has a special resonance for leftwing influences on American
popular culture in Hollywood, film and television. During the 1930s-50s,
future blacklist victims devised radical plots of "people's outlaws,"
including anti-fascist guerilla fighters, climaxing in The Adventures
of Robin Hood, network television 1955-58, written under cover by
victims of the Blacklist, seen by more viewers than any other version of
Robin Hood.
Robin Hood: People's Outlaw and Forest Hero also features 30 pages of
collages and comic art, recuperating the artistic interpretations of
Robin from seven centuries, and offering new comic art as a
comic-within-a book.
With text by Paul Buhle, comics and assorted drawings by Christopher
Hutchinson, Gary Dumm, and Sharon Rudahl; Robin Hood: People's Outlaw
and Forest Hero adds another dimension to the history and meaning of
rebellion.
