Kempe, Margery

Abstract

The Book of Margery Kempe (written around 1436–1438) tells the eventful life story of a fifteenth-century woman from Bishop’s Lynn (now King’s Lynn) in Norfolk. It details Margery’s life as a well-to-do wife, mother, and businesswoman who is dramatically called to a spiritual vocation. She becomes a visionary prophet who shares an intimate relationship with Christ; she travels extensively across England and much further-afield on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela; she imaginatively reenacts and participates in scenes from Christ’s life. Unlike an anchoress or a nun, Margery is thoroughly rooted in the world, and the Book details the extreme hardships that come from following a spiritual life while still being a medieval laywoman. The Book of Margery Kempe was essentially unknown from the sixteenth century until the remarkable rediscovery of the sole manuscript in the 1930s. Since then, it has attained canonical status. Recent criticism – especially in the wake of feminist scholarship of the 1980s–2000s – points to the importance and complexity of the Book as a literary text. There is now common critical practice to distinguish between “Margery” – the character as portrayed in the Book – and “Kempe” – the real woman and source of the text. Scholarship on The Book of Margery Kempe has examined a range of subjects, including autobiography, hagiography, pilgrimage, gender, feminism, visions, the body, affect, and dissent.