‘Always the Outlaw’: The Potential for Subversion of the Metanarrative in Retellings of Robin Hood

This paper examines six recent retellings of Robin Hood and concentrates on the representation of class, religion and gender in the texts. The question is asked: ‘what values do the texts implicitly or explicitly arm?’ The idea that Robin Hood retellings are systematic of a socially and politically conservative ideology is interrogated by considering moments of possible transgression of the universalistic metanarrative in the texts.