401 - Robin Hood: The Original Green Man (Nottingham talk)

The Symbolic World

Jonathan Pageau

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I was invited to give this talk on Robin Hood in Nottingham—just a stone’s throw from Sherwood Forest—on the feast of Pentecost. What began as a reflection on a beloved folk hero opened into something deeper: a meditation on rebellion, trickery, legitimacy, and the strange holiness that's possible for jesters and outlaws. In this talk, I explore how Robin Hood, the Green Man, King David, and even figures from Islamic tradition and Arthurian legend, all point toward a surprising truth—that the margins of society can conceal servants of the true King. I hope you enjoy it.

Original YouTube version: https://youtu.be/7Q4LBLmeeMw

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This course is designed to help students appreciate the unique role the Bible plays in helping us step into the world as it truly is: a symbolic revelation of the Infinite God. Scripture is symbolic because it is a revelation of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the Archetype of the World. In a way, then, Scripture enfolds within itself the totality of the world, guiding its hearers to see an icon of Christ in each of God’s creatures: from trees to beasts to priests.
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:30 - Intro music
01:56 - Introduction by Jonathan
03:34 - Introduction: The virtuous rebel
06:10 - Who does Robin Hood resemble?
09:40 - Green
14:25 - A trickster for God
16:39 - David
25:41 - He loses at the edge
39:24 - The Green man: Merlin
45:25 - Q&A starts: St. Christopher
46:39 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
48:55 - Maid Marian and the Virgin Mary
49:53 - Difference between giants and monsters
51:20 - Intention
53:01 - Robin Hood in politics
54:10 - Marksmanship
55:54 - Does the end justify the means
57:42 - Is Robin Hood religious?
59:06 - Locations and history
01:01:38 - Humor in Christianity
01:03:20 - Trickery
01:06:46 - What goes around comes around
01:08:15 - Downstream from the Gospel
01:11:44 - Christ vs Robin Hood in history

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My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	As Robin Hood kind of develops into the Tudor period, you really get the sense that one of the things that motivates Robin Hood, two things.
0:08.7	One is his love for virtuous maiden, which at the time would have been seen as very much an honorable pursuit.
0:15.5	His love of Maid Marian becomes something that is beyond his thuggery, you could say.
0:20.5	But then the more interesting part is the idea that he is, he's an aristocrat, right?
0:26.1	He's a, he's a lord that has lost his, he has lost his place because now Prince John or the
0:32.9	sheriff of Nottingham or whoever's in authority is corrupt and has taken from him that place,
0:39.4	but he also knows that he is not the king, that he can't take that role.
0:45.5	And so he remains faithful to the true king, right?
0:48.4	He remains faithful to King Richard, who is away, and he just finds a way to exist in that inverted world where the authority
0:59.0	has become illegitimate, pokes at it, plays with it, and tries to survive until the king returns
1:06.7	and restores order. And so what happens in that place
1:12.6	is that Robin Hood becomes a image of everything
1:18.6	that opposes authority,
1:21.6	but does it, we'll see as we look at this story,
1:24.6	does it in a very fascinating way,
1:26.6	which is different from simple rebellion
1:29.4	and simple revolution. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world.
1:47.0	What you're about to see is a talk I gave in Nottingham, England on Robin Hood.
2:03.3	As some of you know, I've been traveling quite a bit in the past few weeks.
2:07.9	I was in England, in France, also went to Istanbul to film a documentary with John Ravaki.
2:13.7	But this little part was something that I couldn't refuse.
2:17.0	I was invited to come speak about
	...

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