SOURCE: "Havelok the Dane and Society," in The Chaucer Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, Fall, 1971, pp. 142-51.

In the following essay, Halverson compares and contrasts the French and English versions of the Havelok romance, contending that they reflect some large differences between French and English societies.

Havelok the Dane is one of a very small number of Middle English romances that still retain their charm. It is no monument of medieval literature, to be sure, but it endures; it is incomparably more readable than other popular romances such as Guy of Warwick or Beves of Hamtoun, which represent a vulgarization of the genre. Havelok, unlike these, is not, I think, a translation or adaptation of a French work, but an independent version of an older tale. Both the principal French rendering¹ and the English version apparently have their roots in Lincolnshire, but the latter poem seems to be more English...