The ecology of the English outlaw in medieval literature : from Fen to Greenwood / Sarah Harlan-Haughey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harlan-Haughey, Sarah, author.

Series:

Outlaws in literature, history, and culture ; 1.

Outlaws in literature, history, and culture ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English literature.

Outlaws in literature.

Literature, Medieval--History and criticism.

Literature, Medieval.

Literature and society--England--History--To 1500.

Literature and society.

England.

History.

English literature--Old English, ca. 450-1100--History and criticism.

English literature--Middle English.

English literature--Old English.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

x, 219 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2016.

Summary:

Arguing that outlaw narratives become particularly popular and poignant at moments of national ecological and political crisis, Sarah Harlan-Haughey examines the figure of the outlaw in Anglo-Saxon poetry and Old English exile lyrics such as Beowulf, works dealing with the life and actions of Hereward, the Anglo-Norman romance of Fulk Fitz Waryn, the Robin Hood ballads, and the Tale of Gamelyn. Although the outlaw's wilderness shelter changed dramatically from the menacing fens and forests of Anglo-Saxon England to the bright, known, and mapped Greenwood of the late outlaw romances and ballads, Harlan-Haughey observes that the outlaw remained strongly animalistic, other, and liminal. His brutality points to a deep literary ambivalence toward wilderness and the animal, at the same time that figures such as the Anglo-Saxon resistance fighter Hereward, the brutal yet courtly Gamelyn, and Robin Hood often represent a lost England imagined as pristine and forested. In analyzing outlaw literature as a form of nature writing, Harlan-Haughey suggests that it often reveals more about medieval anxieties respecting humanity's place in nature than it does about the political realities of the period. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 The wolf and the fen: outlawry and exile in Anglo-Saxon England 23

2 Hereward: a sense of place 69

3 Frontier Fauvism in Fouke le Fitz Waryn 101

4 The menace in the Greenwood: Gamelyn, Gisborne, and Little John 143

5 Chasing the green hart 178.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472465504

1472465504

OCLC:

930026692