A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe

Margery Kempe's Book provides rare access to the "marginal voice" of a lay medieval woman, and is now the focus of much critical study. This Companion seeks to complement the existing almost exclusively literary scholarship with work that also draws significantly on historical analysis, and is concerned to contextualise Kempe's Book in a number of different ways, using her work as a way in to the culture and society of medieval northern Europe. Topics include images and pilgrimage; women, work and trade in medieval Norfolk; political culture and heresy; the prophetic tradition; female mystics and the body; women's roles and lifecycle; religious drama and reenactment; autobiography and gender.

Contributors JOHN H. ARNOLD, P.H. CULLUM, ISABEL DAVIS, ALLYSON FOSTER, JACQUELINE JENKINS, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, KATE PARKER, KIM M. PHILLIPS, SARAH SALIH, CLAIRE SPONSLER, DIANE WATT, BARRY WINDEATT.

Reviews

Contains much that will enrich future interpretations of this text.[...] There is much to recommend. THE MEDIEVAL REVIEW

Details

First Published: 30 Nov 2004
13 Digit ISBN: 9781843840305
Pages: 270
Size: 23.4 x 15.6
Binding: Hardback
Imprint: D.S.Brewer
Subject: Medieval Literature
BIC Class: DSBB

Details updated on 13 Jun 2013

Contents

• 1  Preface [with Katherine J Lewis]
• 2  Preface [with John H Arnold]
• 3  Introduction: Reading and Re-Reading The Book of Margery Kempe< /I>
• 4  Margery Kempe and the Ages of Woman
• 5  Men and Margery: Negotiating Medieval Patriarchy
• 6  Lynn and the Making of a Mystic
• 7  Margery's Trials: Heresy, Lollardy and Dissent
• 8  A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon: The Book of Margery Kempe in its Early Print Contexts
• 9  Reading and The Book of Margery Kempe
• 10  Margery Kempe, Drama and Piety
• 11  Political Prophecy in The Book of Margery Kempe
• 12  Margery's Bodies: Piety, Work and Penance
• 13  `Yf lak of charyte be not ower hynderawnce': Margery Kempe, Lynn, and the practice of the spiritual and bodily works of mercy
• 14  Margery Kempe and Saint-Making in Later Medieval England
• 15  Final Thoughts [with Katherine J Lewis]
• 16  Final Thoughts [with John H Arnold]