A Structuralist Take on Robin Hood

 

I went online and found this older edition of the book I've been reading on my walks out to the park. I have not purchased it but I might when I finish the version I h ave. The author H.E. Marshall is actually "Henrietta" (I had been picturing the classic movie actor Herbert Marshall!). The original edition was published in 1912. The one above is no doubt a later edition. The version I'm reading in the park is a cheap paperback reprint with black and white reproductions of the color plates from the original, no doubt published as such because the book is out of copyright at this point.  All of this has gotten me interested in the actual history of the Robin Hood legend--what are the "original" sources and how they evolve over the centuries. 

Robin Hood is about defying corrupt authority, both secular and religious. His deceit of the greedy Sheriff of Nottingham in Chapter 4 is followed in the next chapter, Chapter 5 "Robin Hood and the Bishop, by a similar but anti-parallel encounter with the malevolent Bishop of Hereford. 

The Bishop of Hereford has a hatred for Robin because of the humiliation he suffered at Christabel's wedding. He also knows he can collect a reward from the Sheriff if he captures Robin. He is as corrupt as Church authority can get. 

I saw anti-parallel here because it follow the rule I noticed in Hollywood movies---nothing is ever repeated exactly. There must always be at least one prominent variation of a story element. There is always a switch of polarity on some axis within the narrative. For example, the Sheriff follows Robin foolishly into the forest alone, without guards believing himself safe when he was not.  He has the Sheriff in his control the entire time and is never in danger.

In a structuralist sense, these elements switch polarities in the next chapter, which has the Bishop entering the forest on is own initiative, and accompanied by heavy guard of soldiers. He is under no delusions about his situation. He is seeking Robin explicitly, attempting to draw Robin out to capture him. With him he carries a large sum of gold which does not belong to him but to a monastery to which he is headed. It is pointed out that the monasteries at that time were corrupt as well.

In fact, the Bishop's men do spot Robin, who is alone and vulnerable, and barely escapes their hot pursuit, all the while knowing he will be executed if caught. 

Instead of calling his bowmen to come to him, he has to seek refuge out, in the cottage of an old hermit woman, for whom he has provided goods to her. 

With the Sheriff, he went into town in disguise. Here is flees from his pursuers and dons a disguise in order to escape. He does this by asking the old woman for a dress and cap, so he can pretend to be her, in order to evade the Bishop's men. Meanwhile she will wear his Lincoln green suit and cap and pretend to be Robin when the soldier's arrive. Robin promises to come to her rescue with his men.

Pretty much everything goes according to his new plan, and he intercepts the Sheriff and disarms his soldiers. Of course he confiscates the Bishop's gold, but instead of the stated reason being a meal that the Sheriff will get to experience later that day, it is as payment for the services Robin has already rendered. 

This is the way stories generally were constructed---by variations. I went through a Yale course on literary theory a few years back that turned me onto this.. Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes wrote much about this kind of thing in exploring what is known as structuralism. 

In a simple variation story, we might have only one alteration on the narrative axis each time leads someone into the Green Wood. For example a soldier of the Sheriff, then a captain, then the Sheriff himself. Instead we get an almost complete variation of the narrative between Sheriff and Bishop on many different axes of the narrative, as mentioned above. That means that in two passes, we have essentially filled out the entire "space" of narrative variation in a Levi-Strauss sense. There is hardly any room for a third such incident with further variation of the story. That tells me that the third time it happens---for there must be a third time---will be radically different than the first two. It must be in a whole new "story space". I can hardly wait.

Also in this chapter we finally hear of Maid Marian, who will finally make an appearance in the next chapter. In the meantime Robin sends the old woman of the forest off to Marian in order to be fitted with finer dress, and be placed in her protection. One thus knows of Marian's goodness before we meet her. We know she is a very important person for Robin.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009), the godfather of structuralism, which dominated literary criticism in the mid 1960s until the rise of deconstruction.  At first it was hard to grasp what he meant by the narrative space of a story, until I listened this lecture from 1984 in which he talks about the myths and legends of various isolated tribes in British Columbia as recorded by an anthropologist in the early 20th century. Every possible variation of the myth comes into being over time, as varies within certain constraints. He first noticed this about Oedipus and concluded that in regard to myths and legends, there is never a definitive version. All of the versions and variations contribute to a "story space" that builds over time. I think about this a lot in regard to the contemporary switching theace, sex, sexuality, etc. of well-known story characters, say in Disney or Star Wars or in comics.  Doing so is almost a trope at this point. It think it is well explained by the ideas of Levi-Strauss in regard to the need for the culture to fill out the expanded "DEI" story space of existing narratives. I've never heard anyone else say this, probably because no one cares about structuralism anyone, and my thesis here would probably be seen as reactionary/racist/homophobic/transphobic/misogynist but the numb-brained academics who know only "critical race theory." That is basically the only tool in their toolbox.  Even my late grandfather, who was a Marxist academic and professor of French literature, could not stand them. How far we have fallen since the 1960s.