Unlike many medieval figures of fact or fiction, everybody knows something about Robin Hood, that most famous of all English outlaws, who is featured in two of the tales in Thomas Ohlgren's handsome collection which brings together new and fresh translations from six different languages--two Latin, one Old French, two Anglo-Norman, three English (two Middle English and one Early Modern), one Middle Scots, and one Norse.
What this array of readily available prose translations may mean is that outlaws are in! There have been several earlier indications of this outlaw onslaught. During the last decade three Robin Hood films have been made (two serious and one parody), there's a television series that has completed its second season, and appropriately enough a second international Robin Hood conference has been scheduled for July of l999 in Nottingham. But Robin Hood, as Ohlgren's collection makes clear, was not alone. Perhaps we can anticipate future films (or even television series) about Earl Godwin, Hereward the Wake, Eustache the Monk, Fouke fitz Waryn, or that tripartite gang of Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough and William of Cloudesley. After all, Mel Gibson's Braveheart won a host of Academy Awards by following Blind Harry and playing fast and loose with the legend of William Wallace. Hollywood could do worse than use Ohlgren or any of his contributors as guest consultants for a summer blockbuster or made for television film.
That's not to suggest that this book does for any of the medieval outlaws what Randall Wallace (Gibson's script writer) did for Wallace and Bruce. This is a respectable and reliable academic edition. Ohlgren has provided a "General Introduction" (pp. xv-xxix) which compares and contrasts the ten tales and deftly offers several cultural and theoretical lenses (Hobsbawm, Beneckke, Radin, and Bakhtin). To that list might be added Graham Seal's The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britian, America and Australia (Cambridge University Press, l996). Then, as one would expect in an edition or translation, each tale is introduced by its translator in terms of historical context, manuscripts, sources, and narrative themes or patterns. Each translator also has an opportunity to explain any special problems, practices, or procedures used. With the exception of two short passages "in prosimetric form" in the Vita Edwardi Regis, the translations are in serviceable straightforward prose. Having myself tried to render Blind Harry's Middle Scots into modern English for an undergraduate film course, I can only admire the clarity and conciseness of Walter Schepp's version of The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace.
Either as a cause or effect of outlaw popularity, academic courses have appeared in England and America to examine that turbulent and transgressive tradition. This is not merely because academics love to examine lost battles and champion lost causes from the conformable distance of several centuries. There are a number of interesting historical treatments of Robin Hood, especially Maurice Keen's Outlaws of Medieval Legend (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961, reprint revised l977, l987) and J. C. Holt's Robin Hood (Thames and Hudson, l982, 2nd and enlarged edition l989). Literary historians have finally gotten to Robin Hood, as witness Stephen Knight's magisterial Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (Blackwell, l994). Interestingly enough, as my citations suggest, many of these works have gone through several editions and all are still in print.
Perhaps because of this unusual congruence of popular and academic interest, a number of books have made it possible for one to teach a course in Robin Hood and/or the other medieval outlaws. R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor's Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Introduction to the English Outlaw is in its third edition (Sutton Publishing, l997). Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren have an excellent TEAMS edition of Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (l997), which contains an unmodernized text of Gamelyn and an excerpt from Thomas E. Kelley's translation of Fouke fitz Waryn. The latter is given in full form in Ohlgren's Medieval Outlaws.
The only real competition to Ohlgren's collection is Glyn Burgess' translation of Fouke Fitz Waryn and Eustache the Monk in his Two Medieval Outlaws (D. S. Brewer, l997), and Ohlgren wins by sheer number and ease of access if nothing else. I will be making use of Ohlgren's edition this fall in my King Arthur and Robin Hood seminar. I hope that Sutton Publishing will soon bring it out in paperback as it would be an ideal text for undergraduate or graduate seminars.