SOURCE: "Community and Consciousness in Early Middle English Romance," in Style and Consciousness in Middle English Narrative, Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 16-54.

In the following excerpt, Ganim describes a repeated pattern found in Havelok the Dane in which the epic gives way to the real—which in turn yields to comic synthesis. Ganim further explores the use of geography to evoke distinctions between social classes.

A number of scholars have described the change in society, sensibility, and form that surrounded the transformation of epic into romance.¹ Most studies, however, have concerned themselves with the elegant Old French productions of the twelfth century or have debated the degree of overlap and continuity between the two genres. The shift from heroic to chivalric values, from social struggle to individual quest, from concern with the survival of the entire community to concern with the perfection of specific class ideals, all these...