CFP for Edited Collection: New Readings of the Medieval Robin Hood Tales (DEADLINE EXTENDED)

CFP for Edited Collection: New Readings of the Medieval Robin Hood Tales

Editors: Mikee Delony, PhD and Perry Neil Harrison

The 2013 publication of Thomas Ohlgren and Lister Matheson’s Early Rymes of Robyn Hood: An Edition of the Texts, ca. 1425-1600 provides new opportunities for scholars to reread and reconsider the earliest Robin Hood rhymes and plays.  Scholars now have access to the extant manuscripts of the late medieval ballads as well as two early plays. Now that these early texts are readily available—some for the first time—it is time for scholars of a wide range of interests and backgrounds to return to the medieval rhymes with the aid of this significant new resource that allows for truly in-depth analysis of the source materials.

We plan an interdisciplinary approach for essays in this volume to include literary, linguistic, historical, cultural, performance studies, and theoretical approaches, among others. We have publisher interest in the collection, pending contributor response to the CFP.

We hope to raise questions outside the traditional literary, cultural, or mythological study of the Robin Hood legend after the medieval period.  Some possible topics include:

• The status of the outlaw hero in late medieval culture.
• Robin Hood rhymes’ place in the medieval outlaw corpus.  
• Ways later adapters of the rhymes, such as Child, Dobson and Taylor, and others represent the manuscript variations.
• Dating and context of the early texts based on the availability of the non-normalized source materials.
• The effect of multiple versions of selected ballads on literary or historical Robin Hood scholarship  
• On oral transmission studies,  
• On performance, carnival, or play studies.  
• Effect of manuscripts on previous analyses of the tales,
• Manuscripts’ contribution to ongoing Robin Hood and/or outlaw scholarship.

Please send 300-500 word abstracts along with a brief biography to Dr. Mikee Delony--mikee.delony@acu.edu--by April 1, 2016.  We plan to notify participants of acceptance by April 1, 2016.  Please send complete (4000-6000 word) essays to mikee.delony@acu.edu by July 31, 2016.