Robin Hood and Other Social Bandits in Folk and Popular Culture
HYBRID biannual conference of
the International Association for Robin Hood Studies
26-27 June 2025
The Jagiellonian University, Cracow (Poland)
(and ONLINE)
source: https://robinhoodscholars.blogspot.com/2024/04/biennial-iarhs-conference-cfp.html
The Robin Hood tradition has inalienably been a part of popular culture and some of its elements undoubtedly come from folk culture. Already Robin Hood ballads or rhymes, as they are also called, represented popular culture. The idea of a social bandit or a bandit rebel, understood by Eric Hobsbawm as the one who “challenges the economic, social and political order” (Bandits 7), is related to social justice and injustice, which has always been present in folklore. Not only the medieval and later Robin Hood can be defined as a social bandit, but such outlaws as Janosik and Ondrašek, provincial as they are according to Hobsbawm (Bandits 47), fulfill the criteria for it. The two lived respectively in the Slovakian and Polish mountains in the 18th and 19th centuries and in the legends they opposed both aristocracy and the Hapsburg rule that stood behind this aristocracy. In Australia Ned Kelly has its admirers, who relate him both to the class conflicts of the 19th-century Australia and to the social wrongs that supposedly affect some Australians at present.
Both folk and popular cultures have been open to the concept of social ills that outlaws may oppose, or at least such are the legends about them.
The topics related to this may refer to literary texts, films, graphic novels, and all the other material that represents popular and folk culture. The topics may include, for example:
-outlaws that opposed social injustice: the legend and the historical background
-reworking old myths into those that cater for the current needs
-ideologies behind the idea of social justice in the texts of culture about outlaws
-the concept of the law and justice in outlaw narratives
-popular reworkings of old myths about social bandits
-nationalistic and racist uses of the outlaw myths
All other topics related to this are also welcome.
Please send your 200-word abstract by March 31, 2025 to Dr. Anna Czarnowus at:
annaczarnowus@op.pl.
The Robin Hood tradition has inalienably been a part of popular culture and some of its elements undoubtedly come from folk culture. Already Robin Hood ballads or rhymes, as they are also called, represented popular culture. The idea of a social bandit or a bandit rebel, understood by Eric Hobsbawm as the one who “challenges the economic, social and political order” (Bandits 7), is related to social justice and injustice, which has always been present in folklore. Not only the medieval and later Robin Hood can be defined as a social bandit, but such outlaws as Janosik and Ondrašek, provincial as they are according to Hobsbawm (Bandits 47), fulfill the criteria for it. The two lived respectively in the Slovakian and Polish mountains in the 18th and 19th centuries and in the legends they opposed both aristocracy and the Hapsburg rule that stood behind this aristocracy. In Australia Ned Kelly has its admirers, who relate him both to the class conflicts of the 19th-century Australia and to the social wrongs that supposedly affect some Australians at present.
Both folk and popular cultures have been open to the concept of social ills that outlaws may oppose, or at least such are the legends about them.
The topics related to this may refer to literary texts, films, graphic novels, and all the other material that represents popular and folk culture. The topics may include, for example:
-outlaws that opposed social injustice: the legend and the historical background
-reworking old myths into those that cater for the current needs
-ideologies behind the idea of social justice in the texts of culture about outlaws
-the concept of the law and justice in outlaw narratives
-popular reworkings of old myths about social bandits
-nationalistic and racist uses of the outlaw myths
All other topics related to this are also welcome.
Please send your 200-word abstract by March 31, 2025 to Dr. Anna Czarnowus at:
annaczarnowus@op.pl.
