Literarily Speaking why aren't the ballads of Robin Hood included in the english literary canon? Why aren't they taught alongside Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Langland's Piers Plowman?
Forget King Arthur or Beowulf, Robin Hood is the actual national legend of England.
>Comes from the tradition of English folk heroes, dating back to the Anglo-Saxon Hereward the Wake
>Transmitted in the common language of the English from the start
>Expresses the sentiments of English yeomen against corruption and anti-poaching laws, unlike moralising French-style romances favoured by the elite
>Nevertheless patriotic: Robin is loyal to the king and England
>Continuously popular, surviving disapproval of the elites in the middle ages, becoming a ubiquitous hero throughout the country with may places named after him
>Entertaining stories that are continuously re-told, and have become part of the language itself with Robin Hood being a synonym for robbing the rich to give to the poor

>>24563890 (OP)
read Ben Klassen.

>>24563890 (OP)
They really are in the English literary canon, through Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which influenced all of Romanticism and led to the revival of the balladic form and eventually Walter Scott portraying Robin Hood in Ivanhoe.