Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here. For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM the moderation team. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2018, refer to archives] 2018 January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown] February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe July: Warlock by Oakley Hall August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott September: The Magus by John Fowles October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon April: The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout May: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman June: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann July: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach August: Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay September: Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay October: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado November: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett December: Moby Dick by Herman Melville 2020: January: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair February: WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin March: The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini April: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio May: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Dame Rebecca West June: The African Queen by C. S. Forester July: The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale Current: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire, by Howard Pyle The best free online version is available here [high resolution scan]: https://archive.org/details/merryadventureso00pylerich Whatever version you read, be certain it is one with Pyle's original illustrations! If you want to spend money on a copy, your best bet is a Dover Edition, because most other versions don't include Pyle's original illustrations. You can find the paperback Dover editions here: https://store.doverpublications.com/0486220435.html (for some reason, this edition doesn't seem to be on Amazon) Dover kindle version here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A736AX6/ (costs same as print copy, but includes most illustrations). (If you can't find a copy with illustrations, I've put all the major illustrations up in an Imgur album here: https://imgur.com/gallery/bZZmBzs ) About the book This is my favorite book. Unless you're a medievalist, any Robin Hood you've ever seen or read -- from Disney through to Men in Tights -- likely owes a debt to this classic version. It's fun, it's funny, it's entertaining, it's just joy on the page. quote:The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire is an 1883 novel by the American illustrator and writer Howard Pyle. Consisting of a series of episodes in the story of the English outlaw Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, the novel compiles traditional material into a coherent narrative in a colorful, invented "old English" idiom that preserves some flavor of the ballads, and adapts it for children. The novel is notable for taking the subject of Robin Hood, which had been increasingly popular through the 19th century, in a new direction that influenced later writers, artists, and filmmakers through the next century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merry_Adventures_of_Robin_Hood quote:“Long ago you made the best Robin Hood that was ever written.” -- Samuel Clemens writing to Howard Pyle https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/2015/02/mark-twain-and-howard-pyles-robin-hood.html About the Author Howard Pyle is relatively forgotten today, but he was an absolute giant of the American arts and letters in the latter half of the 19th century. He began his career illustrating for Harper's Weekly, achieved quite a bit of popularity, and was given a contract by Scribner to publish his first book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. The book was a huge success and achieved international acclaim. Pyle eventually opened his own school to teach drawing and illustration; Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth were among his students. quote:“Do you know an American periodical called Harper’s Monthly Magazine? – there are marvelous sketches in it. I don’t know it very well, I’ve only seen six months of it and have only 3 issues myself, but there are things in it I find astounding. Among them a glass-blower’s and an iron foundry, all kinds of scenes of factory work. As well as sketches of a Quaker town in the old days by Howard Pyle.” http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let262/letter.html Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. References and Further Materials Here is an incredibly in-depth Robin Hood website, with everything from a google map of Robin Hood related locations (Little John's tombstone, etc.) to meta-analysis of the original ballads: https://www.boldoutlaw.com/ An in-depth blog just about Howard Pyle: https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/ A trailer for "Howard Pyle and the Illustrated Story", a Pyle documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE6-zk9_Yps For some discussion of Howard Pyle as an artist I'll be referring to Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered and some other sources. J.C. Holt's Robin Hood, which appears to be the premier scholarly work on the Robin Hood legend (he never mentions Pyle at all). I'll be making some posts based on this book later in the thread Some blog entries analyzing the five oldest Robin Hood ballads: https://christhorndycroft.wordpress.com/tag/ballads-of-robin-hood/ Suggestions for Future Months These threads aren't just for discussing the current BOTM; If you have a suggestion for next month's book, please feel free to post it in the thread below also. Generally what we're looking for in a BotM are works that have 1) accessibility -- either easy to read or easy to download a free copy of, ideally both 2) novelty -- something a significant fraction of the forum hasn't already read 3) discussability -- intellectual merit, controversiality, insight -- a book people will be able to talk about. Final Note: Thanks, and we hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Aug 23, 2020 |
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# ? Jul 31, 2020 05:10 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 13:34 |
Just look at how fabulous this book is, just look: I don't plan on this being a strict "let's read" but I have so many thoughts about this book so it may kinda turn into that. First thing: This book is an aesthetic experience. It is lavish, it is lush. To a modern reader, it might seem a bit ridiculous at first. It's that too. It's ridiculous and awesome, like a pimp's purple velvet suit. Enjoy the strut. The rich flowing detail in the illustrations. The elaborate pseudo-elizabethan language. The little inset vignettes beside every few paragraphs "narrating" the text (a huge help if you're an eight year old kid trying to read that pseudo-elizabethan language!). This is why it's so important to read an edition that reproduces Pyle's original illustrations and layout -- it's all part of the experience. When I call that experience "aesthetic," I'm not just being descriptive -- I'm also being somewhat technical. Art historians generally classify Pyle as part of the "Brandywine School" movement, after the school Pyle founded. This particular book, though, really needs to be seen in the context of the broader international art movements of the period -- the aesthetic movement, the "Jacobethan" and Tudor Revivals, the Pre-Raphaelite movement, etc. In the same period this book is published, William Morris is printing deluxe editions of Icelandic sagas; Tennyson is reviving the almost-forgotten Morte D'Arthur in his Idylls of the King. Pyle had even published his own illustrated version of Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott in 1881, just two years prior to the Merry Adventures. So compare the flowing borders on the title and "Preface" page above, with, say, the Acanthus leaf patterns of William Morris: Or compare Pyle's pseudo-Elizabethan prose -- language as anachronistic for a Robin Hood set in the England of the 1100's as it is for us today -- with Tennyson's pseudo-archaic Arthurian poetry. Even the art style Pyle is using here is a deliberately archaic choice: quote:Pyle's illustrations constitute the most distinctive feature of the book. In choosing his models, style, and design, Pyle openly rejected the latest innovations in printing and in children's books, which would have allowed him to incorporate lavish color plates and drawings. Instead, his drawings (like those of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones for the Kelmscott Press) reflect the work of the earliest engravers and illustrators in the history of the printed book – artists such as Durer, Holbein, and Burckmaier. He even chose to sign and date his drawings in the manner of these first masters of printed illustration. https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4602 Compare, e.g., Durer's Samson Rending the Lion, printed in 1497: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/336212 So just as the Victorians almost aways depicted the 7th-century King Arthur in the rich, complex arms and armor of the High Medieval or Renaissance eras, Pyle is here representing a 12th-century Robin Hood in an art style associated with the 15th and 16th (and, in the process, staking out a claim for himself as an artist on par with historical greats like Durer). And in doing so, Pyle is actually being, in the context of the time, fairly avant-garde. And because Pyle's version achieved wide popularity, that anachronism and style has been reflected down the years in pretty much every other version of Robin Hood you've ever seen (to one degree or another). What Mallory did for Arthur -- syncretizing a bunch of disconnected stories into a unified whole, and in the process stamping that whole with a particular style and tone that has persisted into all later versions -- Pyle in many ways did for Robin Hood. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jul 31, 2020 |
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# ? Jul 31, 2020 05:11 |
So with that general introduction out of the way, let's turn to the text. First, the preface: Let's take that seriously. This is supposed to be a fun book. Don't take it too seriously. Compare, e.g., with the epigraph for Huckleberry Finn: quote:“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. And note that Huckleberry Finn was published the year after this -- in December 1884 -- and we know that Twain read Pyle's Robin Hood to his children earlier that same year because we have a letter, dated February 1884, from author George Washington Cable describing Twain's wife reading it to their children: quote:Mrs. Clemens is reading aloud to Mark & the children Howard Pyle’s beautiful new version of Robin Hood. Mark enjoys it hugely; they have come to the death of Robin & will soon be at the end https://howardpyle.blogspot.com/2015/02/mark-twain-and-howard-pyles-robin-hood.html So Twain and Pyle are keeping company here. This is a book intended to be fun. We're going to take it seriously as a work of art, but we're also going to take it as intended. After the preface, the prologue: quote:
This is the only mention of Maid Marian we're going to get in the whole book. There are a few possible reasons for this. One is that Pyle was basically writing this for young boys and, in the words of the Princess Bride, "kissy stuff" doesn't fit. The bigger problem though is that Maid Marian herself doesn't really fit. There are basically five known early Robin Hood ballads -- 1) A Gest of Robyn Hode, dating to around 1450, which contains eight subsections or "fyttes," and is going to provide most of the source material for this book ("Gest"[ being a medieval word from which we derive words like "quest" and 'jest") 2) Robyn Hoode his Death, a short fragment of only twenty-seven verses, 3) Robin Hood and the Monk, which is actually mostly about Little John; 4) Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne, and 5) Robin Hood and the Potter Maid Marian isn't in any of those; she's mostly from a french tradition of shepherd and shepherdess romance stories and doesn't get added to the the Robin Hood corpus until, like, the 1700's and 1800's, after Robin has started showing up in May Games and plays all the time. There is one recorded Maid Marian ballad, but it's a late addition and an unpopular ballad everyone agrees is pretty awful. So Pyle gets her woven in and mentioned right at the beginning, so that's dealt with. Robin's already got a girlfriend, that's not his problem. What is his problem? COPS. quote:
Earlier, Robin was described as carrying a "yew bow," that is, a high quality English longbow, and "clothyard shafts." What the hell is a clothyard shaft? quote:The clothyard, or clothier's yard, was a unit of length measure from the times of Medieval England. It was an important unit in that many sources available tell us that it was the commonly accepted length of the arrow used in the British Longbow, a critically important technological and sociological weapon from around the era of the Hundred Years' War. It is fixed in popular culture, as the introductory quote demonstrates, by its use in the tale of Robin Hood, whose arrows were described to be of such length. https://everything2.com/title/Clothyard The important thing is, the "clothyard" is military length standard. Robin is walking around with the period equivalent of an AK on his shoulder. It's ok, though, because he's going to a shooting competition. He's not looking for trouble. quote:
They're not just pissed because they lost a wager. They're pissed because Robin just tricked them into lettting him Do A Crime -- a capital crime -- right in front of them. Before the Norman Conquest, anyone in England could hunt deer freely on their own lands. When William the Conqueror came in, though -- and remember, we're set in the reign of Henry II, so that's just like a hundred years prior and change -- William enacted Norman traditions of hunting rights that limited *all* hunting in the "royal forest" : quote:The royal forest embraced not only wooded areas, but also large tracts of arable land and even towns and villages. Anyone dwelling or holding land within the forest bounds was subject to a complex set of regulations, implemented by royal officials answerable only to the king. They were prevented from hunting freely . . . https://earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/reference/essays/forest-law/ "Suspensus est" there, of course, meaning hanged. Pretty much everybody except the king hated the Forest Law -- it was a big topic section in the Magna Carta -- but the king liked it and he was the king. For scale on the money and on the debt a good rough estimate is that a laborer in medieval england might earn, say, two pounds a year, total. One pound was twenty shillings, a shilling was 12 pence, and a "mark" was about two-thirds of a pound (i.e. about 13 shillings). So forty marks = about twenty-six pounds -- about a decade's wages. (It's a little silly to pretend historical accuracy for the currency values here, but, what the hell). So Robin basically just made a hundred-thousand-dollar bet with some Deer Cops that he could shoot a deer right in front of them, and then he did it. How do the cops react? poo poo hasn't changed, man. quote:
Fuuuck. Shot a deer and a cop. Pyle makes one of his biggest changes to the source material here; in the original ballad sources (part of the Gest and a later ballad from the 1600's, "Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham"), Robin kills all fifteen foresters, no regrets, cops stepped to him, cops die. Here instead Robin's killing only in self-defense and only when goaded and he only kills one dude instead of engaging in mass slaughter. Nice Robin. quote:"Alas!" cried he, "thou hast found me an archer that will make thy wife to wring! I would that thou hadst ne'er said one word to me, or that I had never passed thy way, or e'en that my right forefinger had been stricken off ere that this had happened! In haste I smote, but grieve I sore at leisure!" And then, even in his trouble, he remembered the old saw that "What is done is done; and the egg cracked cannot be cured." No use crying over dead cops Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:24 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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# ? Jul 31, 2020 17:00 |
A "rod" varied between 3 and 8 meters, and is currently defined as 5. So "threescore" (60) rods would be 180 to 480 meters. With "flight" arrows, lightweight ones used for target practice, this would be fairly impressive - Wikipedia puts 315 meters at the limit of what you'd find on a practice field. If he were using heavier combat arrows, anything beyond 220 would be an extremely impressive feat. So even in this first small story, we are shown Robin's legendary skill with a bow
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# ? Jul 31, 2020 23:35 |
Gnoman posted:A "rod" varied between 3 and 8 meters, and is currently defined as 5. So "threescore" (60) rods would be 180 to 480 meters. With "flight" arrows, lightweight ones used for target practice, this would be fairly impressive - Wikipedia puts 315 meters at the limit of what you'd find on a practice field. If he were using heavier combat arrows, anything beyond 220 would be an extremely impressive feat. So even in this first small story, we are shown Robin's legendary skill with a bow Not to mention through a forest, no less! At a moving target! And of course, we don't really *need* to know any of this -- rods are a long way away, marks are a lot of money, etc., is all we really need to know to enjoy the story, and that's all obvious from context. But what the hell, no harm in breaking it down in case anyone is getting thrown by the weird words. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 01:09 |
More to the point, context is fun.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 02:45 |
Gnoman posted:More to the point, context is fun. It is! If nothing else, this is a good chance to learn more stuff. I've probably read this book twenty-odd times over the years, but I'd never looked up exactly what a "clothyard shaft" was before now. So this is a chance to do some deep diving.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 02:59 |
quote:
A villain emerges! The good ol' Sheriff of Nottingham. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJk-yQadw_U&t=44s (Aside: they apparently had to cut most of Alan Rickman's scenes in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves because test audiences ended up liking him more than Kevin Costner's Robin). Sheriffs at the time weren't paid so much as given 1) the duty to enforce the king's laws in an area and 2) the right to take profits from lands or property confiscated from debtors. This did not make them popular. As an example, one historical candidate for the "Sheriff of Nottingham" of legend is Philip Marc. He was the "High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests" from 1208 onwards to 1217 -- making him head Forester also. One surviving record has Marc ordering "The men of Lexington" to give "the Lord the King 100 pounds to have the King's peace, and to spare their town from being burnt to the ground". (Again, keep in mind the two-pound yearly average salary; at the time, the entire town of Bulwell, nearby, was valued at a total of 100 shillings). In the end, Marc lost his job because he was so universally hated that he and his entire family got *specifically called out as a separate line item in the Magna Carta*: quote:"Item 50. We will remove absolutely from their bailiwicks (in addition to eight persons specified) Philip Marc and his brothers, and Geoffrey, his nephew, and their whole retinue." http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/articles/mellorsarticles/bulwell1.htm There is still, entertainingly, a Sheriff of Nottingham today. The current holder of the office of High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire is Professor Dame Elizabeth Harriet Fradd, DBE of Tollerton. The current Sheriff of Nottingham town is Councillor Patience Uloma Ifediora. So we have our villain, but there's one more character we have to meet here in the Prologue. quote:
Good forest times, bros! I'm a-gonna go look for cool poo poo to do. If I get in trouble I'll blow y'all up on the horn. quote:
This guy is not little at all! quote:
Thus begins a noble tradition and pattern we will see replicated throughout this book: Robin gets in a fight with a dude, the other dude kicks his rear end, Robin says "you kicked my rear end, you're a cool bro, wanna come join my band of bros?" and the other dude thinks that sounds like a great idea. Anybody who's ever been friends with someone they got into a fistfight with gets this. On a deeper level, though, I've always really liked that Robin Hood is not in charge because he's the baddest of the bad asses. He's in charge because he helps people and everyone likes him, not at all because he kicks everybody's rear end. Half the stories are about various Merry Men kicking Robin's butt. Leadership isn't about being some kind of "alpha"; leadership is about being a good dude. This stranger is still a little doubtful though so he challenges Robin to an archery contest, which, yeah, we know how that turns out: quote:
This is the "split an arrow with an arrow" trick, which enters the Robin Hood legendarium with Ivanhoe. It's not part of the original ballads, so Pyle sticks it in here, at the beginning, rather than at the Nottingham archery contest. Mythbusters has "debunked" it a few different times, but it actually can happen, if people are using arrows with wider shafts. Also, take note of the saints everyone swears by; Our Heroes all always swear by saints with good Saxon names, like Withold and Dunstan and Aelfrida. Adam Bell was a an outlaw featured in several period ballads, but his legend hasn't stuck around the same way Robin Hood's has. But getting back to our story. Who is this tall stranger? quote:
If you don't love a dumb joke like a seven foot tall dude getting christened "Little John" by having a beer poured over his head, then this ain't gonna be the book for you, son. And I'm sad for you. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 10:25 |
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I’d always heard that a clothyard was the distance from nose to fingertip with your arm stretched out to the side. For me that happens to be 37 inches, give or take a quarter inch or so.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 10:41 |
Khizan posted:I’d always heard that a clothyard was the distance from nose to fingertip with your arm stretched out to the side. For me that happens to be 37 inches, give or take a quarter inch or so. That matches up with at least some of the definitions above, yeah, and is also approximately proper draw distance for an arrow, so would make rough sense.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 11:14 |
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Is this the first appearance of that iconic quarterstaff bout, or was it present in the early ballads? The book's publication happens to coincide with something of a fad in all kinds of martial arts in England, including quarterstaff fencing: Illustrated London News, 26th March, 1870 Stick fencing of all kinds was advertised as a thoroughly and historically English pastime that makes men out of boys. It had staying power too – The Boy Scouts had a merit badge for it sometime in the 1910s.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 11:25 |
Siivola posted:Is this the first appearance of that iconic quarterstaff bout, or was it present in the early ballads? Oh GOOD question. (Now I'm thinking about Sherlock Holmes' Baritsu). The answer is complicated. In the original Gest all the fights are with either sword or bow, and Robin is basically an undefeated superhero fighting the nobility, rich abbotts, etc., and murderin' fools right and left. In the "later" ballads in the 1600's, you get a trend of shorter ballads where Robin goes up against members of the peasantry (usually losing, then they join up), and those fights are generally with quarterstaff. The specific ballad Pyle is drawing on here is Childe Ballad 125, "Robin Hood and Little John.", which is estimated to date from 1680's to the early 1700's, and Pyle follows it pretty closely. Pyle didn't really *invent* much in this book, but almost all later writers have relied on his synthesis to some extent or other. Most people don't go rooting through Child's Ballads. I should probably talk a bit about Child's Ballads. Francis James Childs, an American and Harvard's first professor of English, had, just the year before, in 1882, published a comprehensive five volume set, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads", which is still a standard reference for traditional ballads today, to the point that many ballads are referred to by their "Child number" as often as by their title (e.g., Child Ballad 95, which you may be familiar with). If you look at the list of them, thirty-eight of Child's collected ballads concern Robin Hood and his band. SO when Pyle was putting this book together, he had, conveniently, a comprehensive resource for *all* the major Robin Hood ballads. When Pyle says in the preface that all these characters are "all bound by nothing but a few odd strands of certain old ballads (snipped and clipped and tied together again in a score of knots)" he's telling you exactly what he's done -- he's just taking the best of Child's Robin Hood ballads and re-mixing them into a single unified whole. Pyle's in good company -- many scholars think the Gest was essentially the same kind of thing, a bunch of different now-lost originals getting remixed into a new whole. Pyle just happened to come along at the right time (right after Child made the research easy) to do the same job for the modern era, and with the skill set to do it very well. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 11:41 |
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Here's a medieval take on "pumped up kicks" semi relevant to this month's book.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 17:05 |
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I had a copy of this when I was a kid -- a small, cheap paperback with a thin green cover. Lost it long ago, though. As it happens, Disney's Robin Hood was also the first movie I saw in a theater. And yes, I am dating myself.
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 18:19 |
I just found out that Alexander Dumas published two Robin Hood novels in 1872 and 1873. I'm trying to read them now and they're so painfully awful it just highlights how good Pyle was in comparison. I'm several chapters in and it's all about Robin's foster parents, the Head family (that's not a typo -- Head, not Hood), Gilbert and Margaret,. Or maybe another dude named Ritzon. We meet Maid Marian before we meet any of the Merry Men at all! Those interested can download a sample here: https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Thieves-Tales-Robin-Alexandre-ebook/dp/B00AYJB33U Comically, it uses Pyle artwork for the ebook cover :P It is kinda interesting though just for the sake of comparison with Pyle. This is Dumas, an acknowledged master, writing ten years before Pyle, but he's just horribly loving up everything about it. I think the difference is that Pyle had the good sense to just let the ballad source material breathe. Dumas is trying to be a novelist, injecting a bunch of his own characters, moving the plot around, as if the important thing in the story was the Robin/Marian love interest or Robin's status as a secret displaced Earl (we'll get to that later; it's a very late addition to the legend). But none of that is the core of the story. The core of the story is Robin and his Merry Bros doing cool bro stuff together, getting into scrapes and playing japes on each other, and putting rich people in their place (newfound poverty). And that's what the ballads are about and Pyle just lets the ballads happen and doesn't get in their way. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Aug 1, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 1, 2020 22:15 |
If I remember the Dumas correctly (had that as a kid), the focus of the story was on how Saxons were awesome and Normans were lovely. Never heard of this version, looks like fun.
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# ? Aug 2, 2020 20:12 |
anilEhilated posted:If I remember the Dumas correctly (had that as a kid), the focus of the story was on how Saxons were awesome and Normans were lovely. Yeah, the Saxon/Norman split comes in with Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Pretty much all scholars agree that it's historically nonsensical -- King John was technically king of the "Angevin Empire" which held England and large chunks of France, and by the Henry II / John era the Norman Conquest is a hundred and fifty years in the past. Wales would be independent for another hundred years, and Scotland for another two hundred. On the other hand, y'know, the whole Forest Law thing above was basically a Norman law getting imposed onto English native culture from outside. We do see a little of it in the saints Pyle has everyone swear by, and there's some rhetoric in a few places where it can stand in as a proxy for "rich vs poor,", but since Saxons vs Normans doesn't show up in the ballad sources, and Pyle is sticking really close to the ballads, it doesn't make much substantive difference here. Which, imho, is all to the good -- these days, we're all rightly skeptical of anything that spends too much energy lauding the Saxons.
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# ? Aug 2, 2020 20:39 |
In "Part First," Pyle takes three separate ballads and fits them together into a three part whole -- "And now I will tell how the Sheriff of Nottingham three times sought to take Robin Hood, and how he failed each time." The three ballads are "Robin Hood and the Tinker" , (Child Ballad 127), "Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow," (Child Ballad 152), and "Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutely" (Child Ballad 141). In each of these, Pyle follows the original ballads pretty closely, but his changes are interesting. I. Robin Hood and the Tinker The first few pages of this one -- the Sheriff issuing a warrant, the messenger getting sent to Lincoln, the messenger and the tinker meeting at the Blue Boar Inn, are all pure Pyle. Even the Tinker's name, "Wat O' the Crabstaff," is a Pyle invention -- in the ballad, he's just The Tinker. The Blue Boar Inn The Blue Boar Inn has become a common feature of most modern adaptations, but it's pure Pyle. There is a Blue Boar Inn dating to the 1400's in Leicester, about thirty miles south of Nottingham, and there's also a Blue Boar Public House in Cambridge, whose website informs me that "The Blue Boar was once a popular pub name throughout the country. It was in the heraldry of the Earl of Oxford [commemorating] the defeat of Richard 3rd with the Yorkists at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 . . . The White Boar referred to Richard 3rd. " So the "Blue Boar" is a bit of anachronism, but not a huge one; a name like that would date the inn to the 1400's, not the 1100's, but that's still prior to the era of the oldest ballads we have. Basically, it's another part of the frame narrative, Pyle taking all the different un-named inns in the various ballads and unifying them into one single Blue Boar with an established cast of characters (the innkeeper, his wife Maven, etc). Outlawry, Arrests, Warrants, etc. What exactly is Robin Hood's legal status here, and why is the Sheriff turning to some random Tinker to execute his warrant? This is all reasonably in accordance with actual medieval british law. Keep in mind, the Sheriff would not have had, like, a police force on hand (apart, perhaps, from the aforementioned Foresters, but we already know how Robin handles them). Regular police forces don't show up till hundreds of years later. If the Sheriff wanted someone captured,, he'd either have to arrest them himself, get the town to do it by raising the "hue and cry," or get the person declared "outlaw": quote:What was an outlaw? https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/outlaws-outlawry-medieval-early-modern-england/ Basically, miss your court dates in medieval England, and you'd get declared "outlaw", the courts would seize all your stuff, and you'd be outside the protection of the law. period, so anybody could capture, kill, or otherwise harm you for whatever reward there might be in doing so. The Sheriff's other normal option would be to get the local populace to grab Robin for him by raising the "hue and cry", upon which all the local everybody were supposed to join together to catch the criminal. None of this is working in Robin's case because everybody likes him so the hue and cry won't work, nobody is dumb enough to try to arrest him when he's surrounded by his Merry Men so outlawry doesn't work, and Robin is absolutely cool with living in the forest, so he doesn't have any chattels to seize. So the Sheriff is turning to outsiders, hence all this setup needed to get our out-of-towner Tinker proceeding down the road, warrant in his pouch, with the bright idea of trying to arrest Robin Hood like he's some random dude. This out of towner Tinker bumps into a friendly jokin' dude on the road, and that's where the traditional ballad itself begins. quote:
This part is also pure interjection by Pyle and not present in the original ballad source. The song Pyle has the Tinker sing here is a different song, "Cupid's Bow," which is *not* a Child Ballad, but can be found here, attributed apparently to the Earl of Oxford and dating to the 1500's or so. You can listen to the instrumental music for it for here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPOg4v4F_cE I love the image of Robin just constantly interrupting a dude trying to sing a song. Right from the start, Robin is just fuckin' around with this dude. Big Bugs Bunny Energy. quote:
(a "Murrain" is a term for either a witches' curse, or fatal diseases of livestock). Note again also that our Tinker is swearing by the Saxon Saint Dunstan; deep down, he's a good egg, even if he's not too bright. quote:
Again, just classic poo poo right here, straight out of the ballad original. I love every bit of this, from the "am I not slyer?" to the "And thou show it not to me I know not to whom thou wilt show it." The only real changes Pyle makes over the ballad here the additions to the Tinker's backstory (he's a quarterstaff champion!), and the naming of the inn as the Blue Boar. quote:
The tinker sings another Child Ballad, then falls over. The original ballad just has the Tinker getting drunk here and Robin just out-drinks him; the bit with the "Flemish strong waters" is pure Pyle addition, and an anachronistic one -- distilled spirits wouldn't be introduced to Europe until the 1300's or so. . But it definitely establishes one thing: quote:
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Fuckin' landlords, man. The tinker wakes up drunk and gets a sharp lesson in trusting landlords: quote:
It doesn't take the Tinker long to track down Robin afterwards, though. quote:
Fosse Way was the old roman road that ran from southwest to northeast England, ending in Lincoln. So the Tinker was on his way home. Looking on this convenient Robin Hood Locations Google Map, we it's about twenty miles from Lincoln Town to Sherwood, or a day's walk or so. And as soon as Robin sees this dude he starts loving with him again! quote:The Tinker said nothing at first but stood looking at Robin with a grim face. "Now," quoth he at last, "I am right glad I have met thee, and if I do not rattle thy bones within thy hide this day, I give thee leave to put thy foot upon my neck." This is basically straight from the traditional ballad, right down to the "metal man / mettled man" pun. The biggest change is that in the ballad, Robin has a sword and is outright defeated; here they both have quarterstaffs (more even and more yoemanlike anyway) and Robin doesn't so much lose as have his staff break, which is good because Robin's gonna be losing a lot of fights in this book -- that's how you join the band, you beat Robin in a fight, apparently -- and if we don't give him excuses each time he's gonna come across like a chump. End of the day though free deer meat for life and three suits of Lincoln green is too good a deal to pass up and the Tinker joins. (I believe I read somewhere, but can't verify right now, that king's foresters in the era were paid two suits of lincoln green, so Robin is paying better than government wages). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 3, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 2, 2020 21:03 |
Green clothes makes sense for forest people, but I've always found it amusing that Lincoln Green is so specifically called out. It doesn't appear to have been a particularly expensive or prestigious color, and some sources have Robin himself eschewing it for the more expensive Lincoln Scarlet.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 02:48 |
Gnoman posted:Green clothes makes sense for forest people, but I've always found it amusing that Lincoln Green is so specifically called out. It doesn't appear to have been a particularly expensive or prestigious color, and some sources have Robin himself eschewing it for the more expensive Lincoln Scarlet. There's an odd focus on fabric in a lot of the Robin Hood ballads. I did find this the other night while googling ballad blogs: quote:Thomas Ohlgren, an authority on the early ballads, has suggested that this transferral of chivalric ideology from the knight to the yeoman represents the rise of the guilds and merchant class in the 14th century(4) Robin and his band follow many rules and traditions of the guilds such as the giving of livery, the lending of money and escorting the king in processions. Ohlgren even goes so far as to say that the Gest may have been written specifically for a draper’s guild to be performed at one of their feasts as there are many references to cloth and livery throughout the ballad. The episode where Little John ham-fistedly measures out cloth with his longbow for the poor knight’s livery and is mocked by Much is picked up on specifically by Ohlgren. He suggests that this represents the opposition of cloth dealers to the strict imposing of a standard measure or ‘Silver Yard’ by the cloth guilds. When Robin meets the king he sells him a quantity of Lincoln green to outfit his retinue, just as various drapers’ guilds did. https://christhorndycroft.wordpress.com/2018/04/01/a-gest-of-robin-hood-an-analysis/
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 03:11 |
Dyes and colors were a big thing in Ye Olden Times, because dying was expensive. I just find the focus on this one interesting because (as far as I can tell) it was one of the cheaper ones.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 03:18 |
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Gnoman posted:Dyes and colors were a big thing in Ye Olden Times, because dying was expensive. I just find the focus on this one interesting because (as far as I can tell) it was one of the cheaper ones. Yes, but is it tights? (Sorry, I mean "hose.") Ah, I love this book. Still one of my favorites after...nearly a quarter-century. drat, I'm old. I love his prose; nice and flowing, but not too flowery. Could never get into reading Shakespeare. After I read this, I always find myself talking (or at least thinking) in this style. (Verily.) And the food. Pyle can make anything seem delicious.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 04:07 |
Cobalt-60 posted:Yes, but is it tights? One theory is that Pyle's Quaker upbringing allowed him to write in a pseudo-Elizabethan dialect without overdoing it; e.g., he would have been raised using "thee" and "thou" at home, natively, in his natural speech. The food though -- his characters always have such fun eating.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 12:36 |
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Woke up with this in my head: We're men We're men in hose We roam around the forest shooting our bows We're men We're men in hose We rob from the rich and give to the poor, who knows We may look like sissies, But watch what you say, or else we'll rip off your nose We're men We're men in hose Always on guard, defending the rights of shmoes Apologies to...whoever. Back on topic: I like the setting, too. We're vaguely aware of inequalities and injustices done in the background, but in this part of Merrie England (or rather, Fancy England), the sun is shining and great adventures are at hand. Mark Twain posted:The boys dressed themselves, hid their accoutrements, and went off grieving that there were no outlaws any more, and wondering what modern civilization could claim to have done to compensate for their loss. They said they would rather be outlaws a year in Sherwood Forest than President of the United States forever. I didn't realize that Tom Sawyer and his friends were quoting a contemporary book in their play.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 21:29 |
Cobalt-60 posted:
Well, Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, so a few years prior to this; Huckleberry Finn is the year after. There *were* lots of different Robin Hood plays and stories floating around, though. Very little in this book is new with Pyle.
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# ? Aug 3, 2020 21:44 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, the Saxon/Norman split comes in with Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Pretty much all scholars agree that it's historically nonsensical -- King John was technically king of the "Angevin Empire" which held England and large chunks of France, and by the Henry II / John era the Norman Conquest is a hundred and fifty years in the past. Wales would be independent for another hundred years, and Scotland for another two hundred. On the other hand, y'know, the whole Forest Law thing above was basically a Norman law getting imposed onto English native culture from outside. I can't think of a single 20th century Robin Hood adaptation that didn't make Maid Marian a central character. Even the USSR version, which could really benefit from more poor proletarian robbers.
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 13:57 |
Xander77 posted:Let's be fair - Conan Doyle continues the exact same tension well into the days of the Hundred Years war (and he's writing half a century after Scott). Yeah, it's interesting. Pyle is probably the last major version that *doesn't* include Marian as a significant character. She has so little presence in the ballads though that each modern adaptation tends to end up re-writing her completely anew in each incarnation. Sometimes she's a noble's daughter, or the sheriff's daughter, sometimes she's full on part of the Band, etc. The other interesting 20th century update is that a *lot* of modern versions include a Saracen character. Which is perfectly workable given the Crusades context but is handled with a varying degree of, let's say tact.
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 15:21 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 16:12 |
Xander77 posted:Was that ever a thing before the Costner version? According to the Bold Outlaw website, the first Muslim member of the Merry Men showed up in a 1980's british TV series..
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 16:26 |
II. The Shooting Match at Nottingham Town This is the classic archery contest that generally forms the centre-piece of every Robin Hood adaptation ever. It's present in a few different versions in the original ballads; the version Pyle follows most closely is from Child Ballad 152, "Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow." quote:THEN THE SHERIFF was very wroth because of this failure to take jolly Robin, for it came to his ears, as ill news always does, that the people laughed at him and made a jest of his thinking to serve a warrant upon such a one as the bold outlaw. And a man hates nothing so much as being made a jest of; so he said: "Our gracious lord and sovereign King himself shall know of this, and how his laws are perverted and despised by this band of rebel outlaws. As for yon traitor Tinker, him will I hang, if I catch him, upon the very highest gallows tree in all Nottinghamshire." I love how Pyle sets it up, too: First the Sheriff goes whining to the King Then the King goes "You're my sheriff, right? Do your job" Then the Sheriff sits and thinks really hard (modern reprints usually replace Pyle's use of the word "jew" here with "usurer") and he comes up with a cunning plan. The basic format of this -- the complaint to the King, the devising of the Plan -- is present in the original ballad, but Pyle reworks it a bit. He does a really good job of setting up the Sheriff as sympathetic here. This is Merry Old England, there's no serpent in this Garden; the Sheriff isn't evil, he's just a guy, he's got a job, his boss is yelling at him, he's trying to do his job the best he can. quote:So, as soon as he had returned safely to Nottingham, he sent messengers north and south, and east and west, to proclaim through town, hamlet, and countryside, this grand shooting match, and everyone was bidden that could draw a longbow, and the prize was to be an arrow of pure beaten gold. Again, Pyle reworks the original ballad to make everyone slightly more concrete and more sympathetic. Compare with the original ballad: code:
quote:
I think Pyle's rich description of the scene here is one reason it's been so attractive to later adaptations, especially cinematic ones. The original ballad is pretty much just "well, there was a contest, Robin won lols," without much detail. Pyle highlights every detail and every part -- the crowds, the stands, the archers preparing to compete, the Sheriff scanning the crowd, the herald, the rules. I love how the big hole in the Sheriff's plan is that he doesn't yet know what Robin looks like, which is part of why we're getting this near the beginning of the book, not the end. The other archers Robin is competing against are references to other archers featured in historical ballads. Adam Bell and Clym o' the Clough were outlaws featured in Child Ballad 116 (earlier, when Robin and Little John first meet, Pyle had Little John say Robin shot a better shaft than Adam Bell, so this isn't the first reference, which may be why Pyle changed the name from Bell to Dell). So Pyle is making this an All-Star Shooting Match and giving Robin some legendary competition. quote:And now the archers shot, each man in turn, and the good folk never saw such archery as was done that day. Six arrows were within the clout, four within the black, and only two smote the outer ring; so that when the last arrow sped and struck the target, all the people shouted aloud, for it was noble shooting. And *scene*. Again, Pyle's showing his cinematic eye, decades before there was a cinema; just every detail of the scene drawn with camera-like precision, every necessary part of the scene told in the right sequence with the right cuts, the auditory cues, everything. The version of the archery contest in the Gest, Robin is recognized and it turns into a brawl, so that's probably why Pyle follows the Golden Arrow version more closely. That and cool golden arrow. quote:
I always assumed that the final stanza there was a quote from the ballad, but it's Pyle's own writing, as is the image of the arrow clattering among the dishes on the table. Note that Robin has carefully blunted the shaft to make sure nobody gets hurt. Yoemen and Villeins We should probably define these terms a bit and Pyle's use of an actual footnote is probably as good a place as any. Both of them are essentially class terms. "Yoeman" could mean either an attendant in a noble household, or a freeholding small landowner. quote:Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales contains content on the yeoman's social standing in the late 14th century. The yeoman in "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale" is a "servant" to a cleric, once finely dressed but now impoverished.[4] In "The General Prologue", the Knight is accompanied ("served") by a yeoman who "knew the forest just as he knew his home...this was a hunter indeed." This yeoman has a bow and arrows, and a coat and hood of "forest green",[5] as does the yeoman in "The Friar's Tale", who is a bailiff of the forest.[6] The Ellesmere Manuscript contains an illustration of the Canon's Yeoman. William Caxton's printing also contains a wood engraving of a yeoman. So a "yoeman" is someone of a social class below the actual nobility or gentry -- you're still a servant, or if you own land you don't have a title -- but above the peasantry -- you're a fancy servant and/or you actually own land. Basically the fabled "middle class." A man-at-arms or soldier employed in a knight's retinue might also be considered a "yoeman" -- you're a fancy guy with weapons and livery, just not titled. A "villein", by contrast . . that's another word for serf. Technically speaking you weren't a slave, and you could own your own property and had legal rights, but you couldn't leave the lord's land without permission. So the Sheriff is a nobleman, with serfs and servants; Robin and his men, by contrast, are legally independent, all yoemen together, free as the birds, even though they don't own anything and aren't anyone's servants. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Aug 4, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 16:35 |
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Gilbert's "A man cannot do aught but his best" is of course taken directly from Ivanhoe, where Hubert (whose grandsire may have drawn a good long bow at Hastings, but who doesn't make it into the final three here) competed with "Locksley," in an archery contest sponsored by Prince John.
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# ? Aug 4, 2020 17:30 |
I need to amend an earlier comment -- It turns out there actually was an incident of arrow-splitting before Ivanhoe; in one manuscript version of Robin Hood and Queen Catherine, a version lost and only discovered in 1993, as part of the "Forresters Manuscript", the archetypal arrow-splitting scene occurs. That manuscript dates to the 1670's, and thus predates Ivanhoe but we don't know that Sir Walter Scott had seen it. https://slate.com/culture/2012/06/braves-merida-like-robin-hood-splits-arrows-can-you-really-split-an-arrow-with-an-arrow.html Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Aug 8, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 5, 2020 02:34 |
Would all the other archers of legend have been known in Pyle's day? Having Robin best them all is a lovely dramtic touch, but it would be lost on a modern audience.
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# ? Aug 5, 2020 17:21 |
Gnoman posted:Would all the other archers of legend have been known in Pyle's day? Having Robin best them all is a lovely dramtic touch, but it would be lost on a modern audience. That's a question beyond my scholarship. Pyle's collecting stories from "Broadside" ballads, which were a relatively popular medium . . . 100 to 200 years before Pyle is doing his work. Other scholars (people who'd read Francis James Childs, professional retro-artists like William Morris, etc.) would have recognized them. The primary child audience wouldn't recognize them but their parents might have? Not really sure, honestly.
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# ? Aug 5, 2020 17:42 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in 1876, so a few years prior to this; Huckleberry Finn is the year after. There *were* lots of different Robin Hood plays and stories floating around, though. Very little in this book is new with Pyle. The setting of Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the 1840's. Robin Hood and his Merry Foresters, by Stephen Percy, was published in 1841, and although it doesn't include the dialogue quoted by Tom and Joe Harper, does have the line "and with one sudden back-handed stroke slew poor Guy of Gisborne on the spot." It may have been the book Twain was referencing.
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# ? Aug 6, 2020 05:03 |
Hieronymous Alloy posted:That's a question beyond my scholarship. Pyle's collecting stories from "Broadside" ballads, which were a relatively popular medium . . . 100 to 200 years before Pyle is doing his work. It almost is reminding me (on a smaller scale) of the role-call of the Achaean fleet in the Iliad, in that it is virtually meaningless to a modern, but somebody versed in the lore of the era (or who had a cultural connection to someone on the list, as the ancient Greeks were said to) they're quite important.
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# ? Aug 6, 2020 05:08 |
Gnoman posted:It almost is reminding me (on a smaller scale) of the role-call of the Achaean fleet in the Iliad, in that it is virtually meaningless to a modern, but somebody versed in the lore of the era (or who had a cultural connection to someone on the list, as the ancient Greeks were said to) they're quite important. My guess also is that Pyle wasn't just writing this for kids; he was also trying to impress his peers. I can't find a direct quote, but apparently William Morris was much impressed by this book: quote:In 1920 Joseph Pennell explained Pyle's success in Robin Hood as one of total design: "Pyle believed that the way the artists of today should work was to take advantage of modern methods. And he designed his edition of Robin Hood from end to end himself . . . he used good type, he spaced his type well, and he arranged his illustrations on the page well; he drew not only the decorative head-and-tail-pieces, but the full pages and the cover, and he also wrote the story. And that book made an enormous impression when it came out here, and even impressed greatly the conservative William Morris, who thought up to that time, 1883, nothing could artistically come out of America." (quoted from a google books search result it would be too lengthy to repost here). So yeah, I think Pyle's including nods to other ballads and the like in order to impress other professionals and scholars. This might be a good time to post in a bit more detail about Pyle's Theories of Art, because he definitely had them. quote:"Throw your heart into a picture then jump in after it." -- Howard Pyle https://muse.jhu.edu/article/248211 quote:
quote:Several times Pyle criticized figures looking away from the viewer. He said: “It is an axiom in Dramatic Art that the face should always be turned towards the audience and Dramatic Art is nearest akin to our art—As soon as the face is turned away the interest begins to flag. You should see the face with its varied expressions.” Quoted in Brown and Rush, “Notes from Howard Pyle’s Monday Night Lectures,” August 29, 1904, 48. https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/pyle-as-a-picture-maker It's really interesting to me that Pyle was in effect teaching his own variation on the Stanislavski Method, but for illustration, not actors, and two generations before Stanislavski published it. I think this is one reason his work is still so effective even a hundred years later. He's not just drawing a scene, he's staging and acting it. Other versions end up seeming wooden or forced, but with Pyle, quote:"And where art thou now, my good lad?" shouted the stranger, roaring with laughter. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 6, 2020 |
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# ? Aug 6, 2020 15:04 |
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I had this as a book on tape as a kid. Well, it was Robin Hood, at least. I know it wasn't the Disney Robin Hood, because I remember his death happening. Maid Marian was there, so it probably wasn't this version. I've long since forgotten the story except in broad strokes, so this is a perfect time to refresh myself. e: The evolution of language is a pet subject of mine, and reading through this it's interesting to note things like "an" and "gin" which have all fallen under the umbrella of "if" these days. "Lusty" and "humming" are also adjectives that no longer apply to the subjects they're attached to. Well, lusty can be attached to a man, but not in the sense that is meant here, and I honestly have no idea what is meant by humming ale. Dareon fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Aug 7, 2020 |
# ? Aug 6, 2020 16:04 |
III. Will Stutely Rescued by his Companions The sheriff hasn't given up yet! quote:NOW WHEN THE SHERIFF found that neither law nor guile could overcome Robin Hood, he was much perplexed, and said to himself, "Fool that I am! Had I not told our King of Robin Hood, I would not have gotten myself into such a coil; but now I must either take him captive or have wrath visited upon my head from his most gracious Majesty. I have tried law, and I have tried guile, and I have failed in both; so I will try what may be done with might." This front section is introduced by Pyle so that he can fit Child Ballad 141, Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly, into his "life of Robin Hood" framework. I think the interesting thing about this front section is that Pyle emphasizes again that 1) the Sheriff is resorting to force because he's run out of other ideas, and 2) Robin is going out of his way to avoid violence, even to the point that the Merry Men are grumbling about it for fear of looking like cowards. But you can't hide in the forest forever. Someone has to go peek their head out and find out what's happening. quote:Thus they hid in the depths of Sherwood Forest for seven days and seven nights and never showed their faces abroad in all that time; but early in the morning of the eighth day Robin Hood called the band together and said, "Now who will go and find what the Sheriff's men are at by this time? For I know right well they will not bide forever within Sherwood shades." Poor Will Stutely, betrayed by a kitten! This whole section is Pyle's invention and it's really striking how well it blends into the story as a whole. It's tense and sharp and well-drawn and every part of it feels concrete and real. From this point on, Pyle is following Child Ballad 141 very closely, often just rendering verse into prose. quote:He shall not be hanged tomorrow day," cried Robin; "or, if he be, full many a one shall gnaw the sod, and many shall have cause to cry Alack-a- day!" Violence is horrible and sad, but when it's time to help a bro, all good bros gotta throw down. quote:
A "Palmer" was a pilgrim who had travelled to the Holy Land and brought back a bit of palm leaf folded into a cross as a sign. Like the medieval english equivalent of a wandering monk. This conversation with the Palmer is in the ballad, but Pyle develops it more, giving it to David of Doncaster specifically rather than to an unnamed memmber of the band, adding norman v. saxon dialogue, and especially adding the " yet he taketh only from the rich and the strong and the dishonest man, while there is not a poor widow nor a peasant with many children, nigh to Sherwood, but has barley flour enough all the year long through him" language -- the "give to the poor" part of the Robin Hood legend is much more strongly present in later adaptations like Pyle's than in the original ballad sources (more on that in a separate post later). quote:
This three-part exchange with Stutely asking to be allowed to die fighting is fairly close to the ballad, except the "sorry jest withal" part at the end, where the Sheriff makes a particularly dire threat; he's going to cut Stutely's corpse into four quarters and hang each of them separately from a tree. This was an actual medieval punishment and a real thing (though often it would be done to people while they were still alive -- see, e.g., "drawing and quartering." But this is a kid's book so Pyle doesn't go into detail on this, probably just as well. quote:
Little John is a BRO, and the Sheriff is a coward. Note how at the beginning of the story, the Merry Men were worried that Robin was a coward, because he was ordering them not to fight; now in the test, the truth is revealed. quote:
I love the raw emotion in this closing section. Real buds and real bros cry because they love each other.
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# ? Aug 7, 2020 20:26 |
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# ? Apr 20, 2024 13:34 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The specific ballad Pyle is drawing on here is Childe Ballad 125, "Robin Hood and Little John.", which is estimated to date from 1680's to the early 1700's, and Pyle follows it pretty closely. Pyle didn't really *invent* much in this book, but almost all later writers have relied on his synthesis to some extent or other. Most people don't go rooting through Child's Ballads. I'm far from a real medievalist but I'm like 90% sure these clothes are all over the place and I love it. The pilgrim on the left is wearing all kinds of pilgrim chic, including a slouchy hat with a scallop shell, indicating he's been to Santiago de Compostela. Got a staff and a rosary and everything. David's wearing what looks like a capotain or a sugarloaf hat, which dates to late 16th or early 17th century. His short jacket (or jerkin shows a distinct peascod belly, placing it pretty squarely in that era. He's not wearing any kind of collar which is probably for the better, since the ruffled collar of the late 16th century would look incredibly out of place in Sherwood. The sleeves on his doublet are amazing, and I have no idea if big wide sleeves like those have ever been a feature of menswear in England. His hose are kind of like 15th century joined hose but way too big for his butt, and I'm extremely disappointed he's not wearing a codpiece. Finally, he's wearing quite an iconic pair of pointed shoes entirely appropriate for the Middle Ages. It's a glorious mish-mash of reasonably historical clothing and I sincerely think it's miles and miles above anything Hollywood's done lately. Siivola fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Aug 7, 2020 |
# ? Aug 7, 2020 21:30 |