ABSTRACT
The treatment of early Robin Hood poems in literary histories, reference works, and criticism on medieval romance from the nineteenth century through the present day provides unique insight into the modern formation and maintenance of that canon, because they have consistently remained at its margins. There are clear reasons to include or to exclude these works based on each of the rationales that have governed the stages of defining the romance canon. The first part of this paper surveys this critical history, tracing both stated and unstated assumptions that governed decisions about whether to include and how to categorize these poems. Stages considered include nationalist models and archival work in the late nineteenth century, formalist models and reference work in the early twentieth century, structuralist models in the later twentieth century, and more recent post-structuralist models. Examining these critical stages through their treatment of the eccentric Robin Hood poems provides insights not as visible in their treatment of more paradigmatic works. The second part of the paper offers an alternative explanation for this critical history, arguing that an equivalent of Moore’s Law has shaped the treatment of the romance canon. Cheaper and better printing, then increasingly sophisticated electronic communication, have consistently increased the amount of information available to scholars and the amount of information they could record in a work, resulting in changing understandings and representations of the canon. As critics could access and say more, their representations of the canon became increasingly nuanced. Recent developments in digital scholarly communication promise more radical revisions in our canons of medieval literature.
