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This article draws on medieval accounts of athletic sport and its literary depictions to examine a tradition of Havelok the Dane's athletic prowess that runs across the Lai d'Haveloc, the Middle English Havelok, and numerous chronicles. Robert Mannyng describes a physical remnant of this athletic tradition: a stone lying in Lincoln Castle said to have been thrown by Havelok. By reading Haveloks stone not merely as a relic of a past king but as marking a playspace—the imagined site of a former game—we may understand the stone as a point of intersection between the pleasurable activities of contemporary sport and historicist imagining. In the romances, Haveloks athletic wonders highlight the social effects of wonder as sport. In turn, Mannyng's stone creates an imaginative playspace within his Chronicle: one that exploits an affective connection between the wonders of athletic spectating and an imaginative engagement with history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of legitimate kingship has informed much recent criticism on Havelok the Dane. Most discussion has centred primarily upon Havelok himself rather than the tyrants Godrich and Godard. This paper, therefore, offers a reading of the overthrow of the two usurpers in the light of medieval English political theory and legal practice, focusing on the means by which each is stripped of power and executed. Godard loses Denmark by a legal process reminiscent of early English jury trials while Godrich is overthrown in a battle whose details suggest the rules for judicial combat as spelled out by Henry of Bracton. The means of execution of the two tyrants is also revealing: just as Godard is stripped of the kingdom by legal process, so is he stripped of his own skin, and just as Godrich loses England in the fires of battle, so is his own body burned. The details of the first execution correspond to Bracton’s proposed penalties for lese majesty while those of the second relate to the function of fire itself as a sign of Havelok’s legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resituating the early Middle English romance Havelok the Dane in its hagiographical manuscript context helps to account for its effusive, emotional narrator. Juxtaposed to the personal, prayerful narrator of the South English Legendary found in the same manuscript, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108. the narrator of Havelok emerges as an instigator of affective, meditative response. Reading the responsive role of the Havelok audience as possessing a meditative aspect aligns the poem with the manuscript's devotional concerns and practices. Ultimately, Havelok directs an audience's affective receptivity toward an investment in rightful secular power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The only complete copy of the Middle English Havelok the Dane romance is collated with the earliest version of a collection of Middle English temporale and sanctorale narratives known as the South English Legenda in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Miscellaneous 108. When Havelok is read within its manuscript context, the vast number of hagiographic texts dictates a reading or listening audience's horizon of expectations of the romance. When considered alongside the legendary's four royal vitae in particular, certain hagiographic features of Havelok are brought to the foreground; as a result, the romance is received as hagiographic romance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transcription of the poem "Havelok," which was copied by scribes. The Middle English poem recounts the adventures of the character Havelok the Dane, and the author analyzes rhymes and possible transcription errors in the poem. The author suggests emendations to the text for lines 1314-1317, in which Havelok recounts a prophetic dream. The poem "The Owl and the Nightingale" is discussed for comparison.