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Robin Hood 'did not exist' (BBC, 6/19/03)

[Professor Stephen Knight] claims the Robin Hood "myth" is reinvented when people feel they are being oppressed by their own version of the Sheriff of Nottingham. [...]

"The obsession with identifying the 'real Robin Hood' is futile and misguided. The name Robin Hood existed - Hood is not an uncommon name - but it's more likely the name gave rise to the character.

"He represents resistance to local oppression - freedom and liberty in whatever shape you need it to take."

"The reality of the myth is that people believe in those values and might be guided by them."

The professor's book, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, describes how the core elements of the outlaw myth - links with nature, hostility to
oppressive authority, youthfulness, fun and games - have been interpreted over six centuries.

"The genuine Robin Hood is a world-wide figure of myth - he represents a utopian vision of liberty which tends to thrive especially in illiberal contexts like the late 17th Century, the early 19th Century and most recently, the 1980s."

One of the most interesting aspects of this is the way the Left tried misappropriating Robin Hood in the 20th Century to turn him into nothing more than a redistributor of wealth. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 23, 2003 11:30 AM