ABSTRACT
Scenes of feasting and drinking in the Robin Hood tradition not only exact a toll from an unwary traveler; they can also welcome a new member to the outlaw band or otherwise bolster community. In addition, they frequently model generosity and courteous, aristocratic behavior, which contributes to community, with the polysemous yeoman outlaw Robin Hood as lord or monarch, especially in the late fifteenth-century episodic narrative poem A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode.
The Geste may have been the main entertainment at the annual election dinner of one of the Great Livery Guilds, when newly invested members, the former apprentices, enlarged the community. In the Geste's feast-scenes, Robin Hood and his men demonstrate rituals of courtesy in behavior and in the aristocratic food served. They deal generously with courteous, truthful guests like the knight, but punish those who are discourteous and untruthful like the monk. Therefore, the Geste is also a courtesy book for these upwardly-mobile guildsmen.
