Most of the legends Americans commonly associate with werewolves are not stepped in ancient folklore but were in fact created by Hollywood screenwriter Curt Siodmak for the original Universal Studios monster movie, The Wolf Man. The necessity of a full moon for transformation, silver bullets being the only way to kill a werewolf, gypsy curses, walking on two feet—in fact, until Siodmak came along, a man turned completely into a wolf instead of a human/wolf hybrid. Hence, the title The Wolf Man. Howard Pyle and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood can be traced to the same kind of manipulation: just about everything most people commonly associate with Robin Hood comes not from the ancient legends, but from Pyle’s imagination. Almost every film and TV adaptation of Robin Hood in the 20th century derives more from Pyle’s novel than any previous ballad or poem or legend. (Though he isn’t always credited, of course.)
The key to Pyle’s influence in imprinting a version of a long-existing character lies in that one keyword in the title. These are not just Robin Hood’s adventures, but his merry adventures. The bandit of Sherwood Forest that existed before Pyle’s book was very often not the type of guy to have merry adventures. Prior to the 20th century, Robin Hood’s moral standing was ambiguous at best and in some cases he was an outright villain. Although Pierce Egan the Younger had beaten Pyle to the punch in establishing Robin Hood as a figure suitable for children’s tales, his book is infused with political subtext that makes the stories much darker than Pyle’s, even though his book also contains the word “Merry.”
The secret weapon of Pyle, however, may be his illustrations. It was the drawings included alongside the text in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood which helped earned Pyle the title of “Father of American Illustration.” If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine what dozens of pictures alongside thousands of words are worth. For Howard Pyle, that combination was almost akin to inventing the legendary figure of Robin Hood. It was Pyle who cemented the idea that Sherwood’s merry men did not just steal willy-nilly, but stole specifically from the rich and always gave to the poor. That is the second key to the success of the novel.
Pyle did not illustrate the newfound unambiguous heroic status of Robin Hood, he infused the legendary figure with something that was sorely missing: unimpeachable morality. Pyle did not necessarily set out to write what would become the definitive version of Robin Hood’s story, but he did intentionally set out to make him into a heroic figure. Pyle tamps down the violence committed by Robin especially and right from the outset transforms him into a redemptive hero who commits to a path of moral righteousness in the wake of guilt for a transgression (unintended though it may be) of that morality. Although Pyle’s most obvious influence on the Robin Hood mythos may be the familiar pageantry and spectacle which makes for exciting cinema, his truly revolutionary place in literary history lies not in being the creator of just about everything most people think of when they think of Sherwood Forest, but in redeeming Robin from all his past transgressions, including all the intentional ones.
