Britanya Mitinde Yer Alan Robin Hood ve Kral Arthur’un Folklorik İncelemesi

Abstract

King Arthur and Robin Hood as two main folkloric figures of national identity played an important role in the formation of the British national identity especially in the nineteenth century. However, throughout the centuries, these mythical stories of these Heros did not remain limited to the British folklore and became well-known in the cultural heritage of other countries throughout the world. The lore and depictions of these two characters were not limited to the written and oral literature but came into existence through different mediums such as television, cinema, and computer games. For the lore of King Arthur and Robin Hood, both stories have topical themes reflecting the political, social, and cultural issues in societies, and deal with the socio-cultural and political conflicts, and shape the future as timeless artefacts. In this sense, the major aim of this paper is to present and analyze the transformation of the folklore which is related to the two folk legends, King Arthur and Robin Hood by using various historical and cultural sources in order to demon-strate the validity of the two legends regardless of time, place, and transmission medium. In this analysis the book King Arthur and Robin Hood: The History and Folklore of England’s Most Famous Folk Legends by Jesse Harasta (2009) will be used as the basis of the evolution of the lore of the two folk legends. Accordingly, it will be presented that the stories and the characters which have been the subject of various myths and legends throughout the centuries have also been adapted and used in a variety of works and products through different forms of media such as film, theatre, opera, television, advertising, and games, and hence, the local history of the lore of King Arthur and Robin Hood has turned into global folklore. The political, social, and cultural use, adaptation, and evolution of King Arthur and Robin Hood will be traced starting from the medieval ages when the original stories emerged until the twentieth century when the lore of King Arthur and Robin Hood has been transformed through story-telling and added to different structures by using different modes of media. Tough some changes in the presentation of the folklore have been observed; the major dichotomic human characteristics such as love, hate, poorness, richness etc preserve their places and stay still without change with all respect.