Robin Hood and Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression, and Justice. Edited by Thomas Hahn. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. Pp. ix + 278; 3 illustrations. $85.

Two decades ago in a fine article on the Robin Hood poems, Douglas Gray made the point that traditional literary studies would never have much to say about Robin Hood because the texts lacked the formal qualities of interest to literary critics. This is true, but fortunately for Robin Hood, literary studies over the past thirty years have turned away from formalism and toward just those issues that are often in the foreground of the Robin Hood materials. What is more, Robin Hood continues to be with us, reemerging on new frontiers and challenging new sheriffs and abbots, and thus remaining culturally vital in a way that most six-hundred-year-old literary characters are not. For these reasons, the essays in this volume†many by literary scholars and critics but also by historians, filmmakers, dramatists, and others†find much to say about Robin Hood, even those thin and formulaic early ballads. Indeed, this collection is evidence that Robin Hood studies are currently at a high point.

Timothy S. Jones
Augustana College