Arthur & Robin

Timeline

Both cycles on one spine, c. 540 to the present. Red markers are Arthurian, green are Robin Hood. The interleaving is the argument: the Arthurian tradition is essentially finished as a medieval project by 1485, and the Robin Hood tradition has barely started.

  1. c. 540
    Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae

    Describes the British victory at Mons Badonicus without naming a commander - the closest source to the supposed Arthurian period, and it does not mention Arthur.

  2. c. 600
    Y Gododdin composed

    Contains the 'though he was no Arthur' comparison, if that line is original.

  3. c. 829-830
    Historia Brittonum compiled

    Arthur's twelve battles; he is dux bellorum, not king.

  4. c. 950s
    Annales Cambriae compiled

    Badon and Camlann entered as annals. Medraut falls with Arthur; the text does not say they were enemies.

  5. c. 1070
    Hereward's resistance in the Fens

    The outlaw-tale genre begins well before Robin Hood.

  6. c. 1100
    Culhwch ac Olwen

    Earliest complete Arthurian narrative; the great court-list and the hunt of Twrch Trwyth.

  7. 1113
    The Bodmin riot

    French visitors to Bodmin deny that Arthur is still alive; a brawl follows. Recorded in the Miracles of St Mary of Laon - evidence that the Breton hope was held seriously, and violently, before Geoffrey wrote a word.

  8. c. 1136
    Geoffrey of Monmouth completes the Historia Regum Britanniae

    Arthur becomes a king with a reign, a magician, a queen and a fall. Everything downstream argues with this book.

  9. c. 1150
    Geoffrey's Vita Merlini

    Merlin as a battle-maddened wild man; the first account of Morgen and the Island of Apples.

  10. 1155
    Wace, Roman de Brut

    The Round Table appears; so does the Breton hope of Arthur's return.

  11. c. 1170
    Chretien de Troyes, Erec et Enide

    The Arthurian romance is invented as a form.

  12. c. 1177
    Le Chevalier de la Charrette

    Lancelot and Guinevere's affair enters the tradition, at Marie de Champagne's commission.

  13. c. 1181-1191
    Le Conte du Graal, left unfinished

    The graal appears, unexplained. Chretien dies. The rest of the tradition is the gap being filled.

  14. 1191
    Glastonbury 'discovers' Arthur's grave

    A lead cross, two bodies, and a monastery that needed rebuilding funds. Also politically convenient for the Angevins.

  15. c. 1200
    Robert de Boron, Joseph d'Arimathie

    The Grail becomes the vessel of the Passion. The single most consequential reinterpretation in the cycle.

  16. c. 1205
    Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival

    The German Grail: a stone, a dynasty, and a piebald half-brother from the East.

  17. c. 1215-1235
    The Vulgate (Lancelot-Grail) Cycle

    Five vast prose romances give the cycle its final medieval shape, including the Queste and the Mort Artu.

  18. 1225-26
    Robert Hod, fugitive, in the York assize rolls

    Called Hobbehod in later accounts; in debt to St Peter's, York. The best historical candidate, and still only a name.

  19. c. 1230
    La Mort le Roi Artu

    The Vulgate ending that Malory will compress into the last book of the Morte.

  20. 1261-62
    William son of Robert le Fevre is renamed 'William Robehod'

    A clerk substitutes the name. Evidence that Robin Hood already meant 'outlaw' by 1262 - so the legend predates the record, and the record is not evidence of a man.

  21. c. 1283
    Adam de la Halle, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion

    A French pastoral play pairing a Robin with a Marion. The likely ultimate source of Maid Marian.

  22. c. 1350-1370
    The Tale of Gamelyn

    The dispossessed younger son who becomes king of the outlaws - the plot Munday will hand to Robin in 1598.

  23. c. 1377
    Langland's Sloth knows 'rymes of Robyn hood'

    The earliest datable reference to Robin Hood stories, in a complaint about religious ignorance.

  24. c. 1375-1400
    Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

    The best Arthurian poem in English, in a tradition that owes nothing to Chretien.

  25. c. 1400
    The alliterative Morte Arthure

    English chronicle-tradition Arthur as conqueror and, arguably, as cautionary tale about empire.

  26. c. 1420
    Wyntoun's Original Chronicle names Robin Hood

    The earliest chronicle notice, dating him to 1283-85. Scottish, not English.

  27. 1420s onward
    Parish Robin Hood games appear in churchwardens' accounts

    Exeter, Croscombe, Kingston and elsewhere. For 150 years this is what Robin Hood mainly is.

  28. c. 1440
    Bower's Scotichronicon

    Robin as a famous murderer celebrated by a foolish populace - and as a man so devout he would not break off mass to fight.

  29. c. 1450
    Robin Hood and the Monk copied

    Cambridge University Library MS Ff.5.48. The earliest substantial surviving ballad, and arguably the best.

  30. 1469-70
    Malory completes Le Morte Darthur

    Written in prison during the Wars of the Roses; the colophon asks for prayers for his deliverance.

  31. 1473
    Sir John Paston's Robin Hood player leaves his service

    Domestic evidence for household performance of Robin Hood and St George.

  32. c. 1475
    Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham play fragment

    The earliest surviving Robin Hood dramatic text.

  33. 31 July 1485
    Caxton prints Le Morte Darthur

    A fortnight before Bosworth. Caxton's preface argues Arthur was real and lists the relics that prove it.

  34. c. 1495-1510
    A Gest of Robyn Hode printed

    The long compilation enters print, fixing a canonical shape for the story.

  35. c. 1505
    Adam Bell printed

    The parallel outlaw tradition of Inglewood Forest enters print alongside Robin Hood.

  36. 1521
    John Major moves Robin to the reign of Richard I

    And states that he robbed only the rich and was the most humane of robbers. Both the Richard framing and the redistribution are in print here, long before Ritson.

  37. 1569
    Grafton's chronicle reports Robin as an earl

    The gentrification begins in print.

  38. 1598 (printed 1601)
    Munday's Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntington

    Robin becomes a nobleman for a courtly audience. The single most consequential change to the legend before Ritson.

  39. c. 1599
    Shakespeare's As You Like It invokes 'the old Robin Hood of England'

    Robin as shorthand for the pastoral golden world.

  40. c. 1670s
    The Forresters Manuscript compiled

    Lost until 1993; its readings are now preferred for several ballads.

  41. 1 March 1675
    Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham registered

    The broadside of the fifteen foresters. The story was current by the late sixteenth century.

  42. 1795
    Ritson's Robin Hood

    The radical antiquary's collection supplies the modern legend's politics, its biography and its slogan.

  43. 1816-1817
    Malory returns to print

    After nearly two centuries out of print, three editions appear in two years, feeding directly into the Victorian revival.

  44. 1819
    Scott's Ivanhoe

    Locksley, the Saxon-Norman frame, and King Richard's return enter the legend permanently.

  45. 1859-1885
    Tennyson, Idylls of the King

    Camelot becomes a Victorian moral allegory and, through that, the popular default.

  46. 1883
    Gaston Paris coins 'amour courtois'

    A nineteenth-century term for a twelfth-century practice, applied first to the Charrette and thereafter to everything.

  47. 1883
    Howard Pyle's Merry Adventures

    The children's Robin Hood, and the costume, are fixed for a century.

  48. 1887
    Isaac Taylor asks 'Who was Robin Hood?' in Notes and Queries

    An early and clear statement of the sceptical case.

  49. 1882-1898
    Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads

    Robin Hood ballads numbered 117-154; the citation system all later scholarship uses.

  50. 1889
    Twain, A Connecticut Yankee

    The satirical counter-tradition begins.

  51. 1922
    Fairbanks's Robin Hood

    Robin Hood becomes a spectacle genre.

  52. 1934
    Oakeshott finds the Winchester Manuscript

    The text of Malory changes overnight; Caxton is demoted from author of the text to editor of it.

  53. 1938
    The Adventures of Robin Hood

    Technicolor, Korngold, Flynn. The reference version of the twentieth century, made in the Depression's shadow.

  54. 1947
    Vinaver's Works of Sir Thomas Malory

    First edition from the Winchester MS, and the start of the 'one book or eight?' debate.

  55. 1955-1960
    ITV's The Adventures of Robin Hood

    Blacklisted American writers use an outlawed hero to write about political persecution.

  56. 1958
    T. H. White, The Once and Future King

    Malory rewritten as a book about whether force can serve justice.

  57. 1958
    Hilton, 'The Origins of Robin Hood'

    Past and Present 14. The peasant-discontent reading opens the modern historical debate.

  58. 1960
    Holt, 'The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood'

    Past and Present 18. The gentry-household reading that eventually prevails. Held locally.

  59. 1961
    Keen, 'Robin Hood - Peasant or Gentleman?' and The Outlaws of Medieval Legend

    Keen sides with Hilton, then later retracts.

  60. 1975
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail

    Becomes, for most people alive, the primary Arthurian text.

  61. 1976
    Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood

    The standard sourcebook of texts and documents.

  62. 1981
    Boorman's Excalibur

    Sets the visual grammar of Arthurian film for a generation.

  63. 1982
    Holt, Robin Hood (Thames and Hudson)

    The synthesis that consolidates the field. Palliser's review is held locally.

  64. 1983
    Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

    The goddess-religion reading enters mass culture.

  65. 1984-1986
    Robin of Sherwood

    Herne the Hunter, and the invention of a pagan Robin that is now widely mistaken for the oldest layer of the legend.

  66. 1985
    Bellamy, Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry

    A renewed attempt at historical identification; Holt's sceptical review is held locally.

  67. 1991
    Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

    Azeem, Rickman, and a shift from social justice to family motivation.

  68. 1993
    The Forresters Manuscript surfaces at a book sale

    The most important Robin Hood manuscript find since the Percy Folio; Knight edits it in 1998.

  69. 1994 (rev. 2000)
    Littleton and Malcor, From Scythia to Camelot

    The Sarmatian thesis; rejected by most Arthurians, adopted by Hollywood a decade later.

  70. 1994
    Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw

    The thesis of continuous reconstruction that organises the modern field - and this portal's worldview scheme.

  71. 1997
    Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales (TEAMS)

    The teaching edition, free online through the Robbins Library and METS. Held locally in full.

  72. 1997
    Dobson and Taylor, 'Merry Men at Work'

    The heritage-hero thesis. Held locally.

  73. 2003
    Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur

    A historian's audit of what can and cannot be claimed about pagan survivals in the Arthurian and druidic material.

  74. 2004
    Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood

    The stories as an imaginative construction of late-medieval society. Held locally.

  75. 2007
    Reeve and Wright's edition of the Historia

    The Latin text of Geoffrey put on a secure footing for the first time.

  76. 2007
    Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems 1465-1560

    Relocates the early audience in commercial and mercantile milieux.

  77. 2010
    Ridley Scott's Robin Hood

    The origin-story treatment; the grim tendency at its height.

  78. 2021
    Lowery's The Green Knight

    The first Arthurian film to treat the medieval strangeness as the point rather than the obstacle.