versions; however, most scholars today agree that com-
bining the two is most warranted.
In this version, Robin, feeling ill during a shooting
match with Little John, decides to visit his cousin, a pri-
oress at Kirklees Abbey, so she can bleed him. Both John
and Will Scarlet advise against this, but Robin insists.
During the procedure, Robin notices that his blood,
which was thick at fi rst, is quickly thinning. Realizing he
has been betrayed, Robin blows three horn blasts, call-
ing on John for assistance. John arrives, but before Robin
can escape, Red Roger, a ruffi an, stabs him. Using the
last of his strength, Robin manages to behead Red Roger.
He asks Little John to hear his confession and then
shoots an arrow out the window, requesting burial
wherever it lands. His wish is carried out.
Recent scholarly discussion has examined the rele-
vance of the prioress as the agent of Robin’s death and
the anticlerical ramifi cations thereof. Others have
looked into the connections between Robin Hood and
the unnamed outlaw in The Hermit and the Outlaw,
both of whom suffered similar fates.
FURTHER READING
“The Death of Robin Hood.” In Robin Hood and Other Outlaw
Tales, edited by Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren,
592–601. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publica-
tions, 1997.
Hepworth, David. “A Grave Tale.” In Robin Hood: Medieval
and Post-Medieval, edited by Helen Philips, 91–112. Dub-
lin: Four Courts Press, 2005.
Alexander L. Kaufman
ROMANCE As a genre, romance is notoriously
diffi cult to defi ne. Romances usually, but not invari-
ably, feature a hero who embarks on a quest or seeks
adventures to prove his chivalric values and discover
his own identity. Generally, in order to accomplish
these goals, the hero has to leave home, sometimes
symbolized by the court. Often, the romance hero
must fi ght dragons or oppose vicious giants; it has
been suggested that almost all of the “identity
romances” (for example, Lybeaus Desconus, Guy of War-
wick, BEVIS OF HAMPTON, Sir Degaré, KING HORN) feature
belligerent monsters which the hero has to quell.
Instead of or as well as confronting a monster, the hero
must sometimes submit to extraordinary tests before
being able return home and live happily ever after (see,
for example, Sir Gawain in SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN
KNIGHT). The tests may be obstacles that have to be
overcome in order for the hero to win the lady,
although occasionally the hero is female, as in Emaré.
The genre combines naturalistic touches with elements
of the marvellous: romance geography is sometimes
vague; and time is often unreal (though characters may
age as in SIR ORFEO).
English romances may be divided into two groups:
EPIC romance and lyric romance. Poems such as The
Siege of Thebes and The Siege of Troy fall into the fi rst
category, being more realistic, historical, and martial.
The second group includes poems such as FLORIS AND
BLAUNCHEFLUR. These romances are more emotive and
more concerned with love, faith, constancy, and the
marvellous. The audience is privy to the hero’s thoughts
and feelings as he or she undertakes feats of arms. The
hero has an inner consciousness, and very often he is
in love. In the earlier French versions of the genre,
these two types of romance came as successive waves,
but in English these types coexisted. Even after collect-
ing together characteristics that may be present in a
prototypical romance text, medieval romance is still
hard to pin down. The slipperiness of the genre means
that the corpus of romance is not fi xed. Some romances
are centrally typical, containing a hero, a quest, and a
happy ending, while others are categorized as romances
simply because they seem closer to romance than to
any other genre. Some romances seem to blur into his-
tory, while others appear to merge into epic: The Siege
of Troy is a romance epic, but JOHN LYDGATE’s Troy-
Book is a straight epic. There are also didactic romances
and hagiographies (see HAGIOGRAPHY) that resemble
romances.
The earliest extant MIDDLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
romances are King Horn and Floris and Blaunchefl ur,
both found in a single manuscript. Early Middle Eng-
lish romances (those written between 1280 and 1380)
are somewhat homogenous, refl ecting the same plot
patterns, situations, and phrases; this probably relates
to the social context of Middle English itself as a popu-
lar language. Romance was unquestionably medieval
England’s most popular genre. The number of surviv-
ing texts is unmatched by any other secular genre346 ROMANCE