Robin Hood and the 'social bandit'

Matter of the Greenwood Topic

Summary: Hobsbawm's category of the social bandit - the outlaw the peasantry protects because he embodies their sense of justice - has been applied to Robin Hood repeatedly and contested just as often, since the early Robin is not embedded in a peasant community and the ballads are not peasant products. A useful frame to teach precisely because it fails in instructive ways.