Robin Hood in Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions

Following in the tradition of recent work by cultural geographers and historians of maps, this collection examines the apparently familiar figure of Robin Hood as he can be located within spaces that are geographical, cultural, and temporal. The volume is divided into two sections: the first features an interrogation of the literary and other textually transmitted spaces to uncover the critical grounds in which the Robin Hood ’legend’ has traditionally operated. The essays in Part Two take up issues related to performative and experiential space, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship between page, stage, and lived experience. Throughout the volume, the contributors contend with, among other things, modern theories of gender, literary detective work, and the ways in which the settings that once advanced court performances now include digital gaming and the enactment of ’real’ lives.

Lesley Coote is a lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Hull, where she teaches Chaucer, medieval romance literature and culture, historical film, ‘Arthuriana’ and Robin Hood studies. Her research specializations are the ‘popular’ culture of medieval Britain, in particular prophetic, apocalyptic and romance texts, in addition to the medievalism of film and new media. She has written a wide variety of articles and essays on these topics, and a book, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (2000). She is currently preparing an article on medievalism and film in the twenty-first century, and a book, Robin Hood, for Reaktion Press.

Valerie B. Johnson is a lecturer at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a former Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. Dr. Johnson has worked extensively with Robin Hood in digital contexts, serving as the contributing editor and designer of The Robin Hood Project from 2006-2012, the web master of Robin Hood Scholars (http://robinhoodscholars.blogspot.com/), and is a founding editor of the open access Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies. Her publications include articles in Studies in Medievalism, Year’s Work in Medievalism, Once and Future Classroom, as well as contributions to edited collections.