Fouke le Fitz Waryn

Hosted by Curtis Rager and Dia Kefalas

Image: Whittington Castle by the Whittington Road. License: Wikimedia Commons

The rapacious but hapless king who usurps the English crown from his brother cruelly seizing the property of his subjects. A noble outlaw opposed to this evil king, and his adventures in Angevin England. If this story sounds familiar,  it's not the story of Robin Hood, but of a hero who was arguably more famous in medieval England: Fulk FitzWarin. Curtis Rager and Dia Kefalas explain the historical background to the romance, its form and crazy manuscript context, and how it fits into the real world of baronial revolt and the Robin Hood mythology. 

Bibliography: 

Keen, Maurice. “The Romance of Fulk Fitzwarin.” In The Outlaws of Medieval Romance. New York: Routledge, 2000.

White-Le Goff, Myriam. "Entre Histoire et mythe: Quand il faut être un héros pour être hors-la-loi." Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, no. 18 (November 20, 2009): 293–305. https://doi.org/10.4000/crm.11714.

Pensom, Roger. "Inside and Outside: Fact and Fiction in 'Fouke le Fitz Waryn.'" Medium Ævum 63, no. 1 (1994): 53–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/43629615.

Dolmans, Emily, "Locating the Border: Britain and the Welsh Marches in Fouke le Fitz Waryn." New Medieval Literatures 16 (2016): 109–134.


Williams, Alison. “Stories within Stories: Writing History in Fouke le Fitz Waryn.” Medium Ævum 81, no. 1 (2012): 70–87. https://doi.org/10.2307/43632901.