The Chartist Robin Hood: Thomas Miller’s Royston Gower; or, The Days of King John (1838)

Authors

Stephen Basdeo, Richmond: the American International UniversityFollow

Abstract

Walter Scott's reinvention in Ivanhoe (1819) of Robin Hood as an Anglo-Saxon freedom fihghter had a lasting impact on later portrayal's of the outlaw. Thomas Miller's novel Royston Gower (1838) reworks Scott's idea of racial conflict between Saxons and Normans to cast Robin Hood as a Saxon freedom fighter to serve the Chartist cause. Where Scott’s portrayal served a conservative agenda of reconciliation, leading to one nation under a just and benevolent king, Miller draws parallels between Norman oppressors and the early Victorian political elite, between Saxon poverty and 19^th century hunger, and between the Saxon hope of a charter preserving ancient popular rights and hope in the 1830s for a People’s Charter guaranteeing political rights.

Recommended Citation

Basdeo, Stephen (2018) "The Chartist Robin Hood: Thomas Miller’s Royston Gower; or, The Days of King John (1838)," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 44: Iss. 2, 72–81.
Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol44/iss2/8