SOURCE: "Havelok and the History of the Nation," in Readings in Medieval English Romance, edited by Carol M. Meale, D.S. Brewer, 1994, pp. 121-34.

In the following essay, Turville-Petre argues that Havelok the Dane is better considered as history than romance and that this was the way it was viewed by contemporary readers of the chronicles.

The establishment and exploration of a sense of national identity is a major preoccupation of English writers of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: who are the English; where do they come from; what constitutes the English nation? The English chronicles of the period, Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle of c.1300, the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle of post 1307, and Robert Manning's Chronicle written in 1338,¹ have a central role to play in answering such questions, as they relate 'all be story of Inglande' in order to give 'be lewed' an understanding of...