CONCLUSIONS

Robin Hood is undying as a hero, and also in narrative terms. In some instances he can die, as in the somewhat perfunctory conclusion of the Gest, the Downfall, and many nineteenth-century novels, but this is generally very rare. When in 1976 Richard Lester presented in Robin and Marion a fine version in which hero and heroine (with the mature power of Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn) grow old and tragically die, the audience’s understanding of, and attachment to, the innate vitality of the genre made the film reportedly the first about Robin Hood to lose money.

Robin Hood lives on and can mean many things. His name can symbolize what is in the United States called “libertarianism,” resistance to any social constraints, but it can also be used to charge President Obama with something that might be taken as socialism. Robin Hood is known everywhere as the international mythic figure of the legitimate outlaw, often coexisting with local figures of specific resistance. Most recently he has developed an identity through not only popular culture, but also university studies: in conferences and publications the new disciplines of medievalism and medieval cultural studies have found Robin Hood to be an absorbing and revealing focus. Journalism and local history may still quest naively for a “real” Robin Hood, but the richness, variety, and contextually relevant nature of the myth over time is the actual and abiding reality of the outlaw tradition.