Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe

Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe is a reflection of the multifarious and dynamic conference from which it emerged, held in Oxford in 2018. While this collection cannot fully mirror the conference as a whole and the generative discussions it promoted, it has brought together established Kempe experts to revisit The Book and explore it from new perspectives. The volume has much to offer not just to Kempe scholars but also to those working more broadly on the late Middle Ages. It contributes to a host of scholarly fields, such as the study of late medieval history, literature, culture, devotional practices, digital humanities, and gender studies.Diane Watt’s essay, “Before Margery: The Book of Margery Kempe and its Antecedents,” which opens the collection, seeks to shift the way we think of Kempe and her text, positioning her not as the starting point of female English writing but as part of a continuum beginning several centuries before. Watt situates The Book within a long English tradition of female pilgrimage accounts, rather than the late medieval pan-European tradition that it is generally read within, convincingly linking Kempe’s work to a different textual community.In “Margery Kempe, Oral History, and the Value of Intersubjectivity,” Katherine J. Lewis employs oral history methodologies to explore the collaborative process of the text’s production and argues for Kempe’s decisive role in the elaboration of both The Book’s content and form. Lewis expands the use of oral history, generally applied within the context of contemporary history and living-witness interviews, to the interrogation of premodern sources, thus offering an important contribution to Kempe scholarship and medieval scholarship in general. In this approach, Lewis uses both the devotional practice of confession, mentioned frequently in the text, and the structure of the text itself, the chronological jumble of the narration, to support her argument. This essay expands the scholarly toolbox by showing that oral history can be a generative methodology for those seeking to access medieval texts, events, and experiences in Kempe or similar medieval sources.One of the major contributions of the collection lies in the three chapters that explore the importance of the oft overlooked prayers that close The Book. Josephine A. Koster’s “The Prayers of Margery Kempe: A Reassessment” is one of the essays interrogating how these entreaties function within the general structure of the text and the hagiographical argument it attempts to make, and illustrates how the prayers are an integral part of Kempe’s self-fashioning. Koster also shows how these closing texts rework contemporary prayers and engage with popular devotional practices, and uses them as a way to better understand Kempe’s lived experience. Laura Varnam, who together with Laura Kalas organized the Oxford conference and co-edited the collection, discusses how the prayers were specifically designed to be performed, tying them into her broader argument, which demonstrates how The Book functioned as a guide and example for Kempe’s lay medieval readers. In her essay, “‘A Booke of Hyr Felyngys’: Exemplarity and Margery Kemp’s Encounters of the Heart,” Varnam traces how Kempe, through established methods of stirring emotions and popular devotional practices, puts forth a new model for intense lay piety, and shows how Kempe draws on popular devotional language and imagery. In her argument, Varnam employs manuscript evidence, primarily the annotations, to illustrate how The Book was viewed by readers as a devotional guide. In this case, exact references to all the folios cited from the manuscript would have been welcome, since they are crucial to the essay’s argument.The collection includes two essays that shine a light on the potential that archival research holds for adding to our understanding of Kempe, The Book, and its context. “Margery Kempe’s Home Town and Worthy Kin” is the product of Susan Maddock’s revisiting of King Lynn’s archives to comb through manuscripts and sources that were inaccessible to Stanford Brown Meech. Maddock presents new materials concerning Kempe’s family links outside Lynn and the socioeconomic dynamics of the city. Maddock’s essay is a useful tool for scholars, teachers, and students, explaining key terms and concepts, as well as expanding upon what was already known about Kempe’s familial and social connections.Anthony Bale and Daniela Giosuè’s essay, “A Women’s Network in Fifteenth-Century Rome: Margery Kempe Encounters ‘Margaret Florentine,’” is also a product of recent archival research. Following the clues offered in The Book, Bale and Giosuè have identified the “Margaret Florentyne,” whom Kempe encountered in Assisi and again in Rome, as Margherita degli Alberti (d. after 1417), a member of the wealthy Alberti banking family from Florence who was living in Rome at the time. The authors trace the circles of Dominican-Brigittine female patronage Kempe interacted with in the Eternal City, deepening our understanding of Kempe’s Brigittine devotion in Rome. Building on the work of scholars such as Nirit Ben-Aryen Debby and Maria Oen, Bale and Giosuè identify Kempe’s Dominican network in Rome. Accordingly, this chapter would be useful also to those working on St. Bridget of Sweden and her cult. However, this study could have benefited from greater contextualization. While mentioning the papacy, it does not address the Papal Schism and the tumultuous conditions in Rome at the time of Kempe’s visit, which impacted the city’s social and cultural makeup. Moreover, the chapter jumps between different decades of the fifteenth century without mentioning the profound political tensions, events, and circumstances that impacted at different times the people and places discussed.Kempe’s continental influences are also explored in Liz Herbert McAvoy and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa’s essay, “The Intertextual Dialogue and Conversational Theology of Mechtild of Hackeborn and Margery Kempe.” This is an abbreviated version of their 2020 article in Spicilegium, which expands upon the suggestion made by Hope Emily Allen that Kempe was familiar with and influenced by Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Boke of Gostely Grace. The essay traces the different routes through which Kempe would have encountered the earlier work, touching upon textual communities connected to Brigittine and Carthusian orders that she was connected to. The essay also discusses the possibility, raised previously by Santha Bhattacharji, that Kempe’s daughter-in-law served as her initial scribe.The collection also seeks to read The Book within the context of the Global Middle Ages through Dorothy Kim’s essay, “Margery Kempe, Racialised Soundscapes, Sonic Wars, and Cosmopolitan Jerusalem.” Kim’s essay offers solid background and historical context to Kempe’s travels and her experiences within Jerusalem and the Holy Land. It also draws attention to the importance of sound and sound making within religious identity and devotional practices using modern digital tools. Beyond painting Kempe as more cosmopolitan in her influences and behaviors, Kim’s essay interrogates digital humanities and how we engage with its practices as both consumers and producers.The collection’s closing section, “Performative Encounters,” contains essays by Sarah Salih (“Writing Performed Lives: Margery Kempe Meets Marina Abramović”) and Tara Williams (“Recreating and Reassessing Margery and Julian’s Encounter”), which read The Book in connection to modern performances, artistic and theatrical respectively. The use of modern perspectives in both essays highlights Kempe’s agency in constructing her authority and fashioning her public image as a holy woman.This collection is a useful research tool for scholars, teachers, and students working on Kempe or the late Middle Ages. However, as a resource, the collection suffers from some weaknesses, mainly within its critical apparatus. Throughout the volume, references are made to the current state of research and developments in the field of Kempe studies, which is described as having been reinvigorated by “new theoretical, methodological and critical approaches” (3). However, these statements are not accompanied by any citations or additional information, neither in the body of the text nor the footnotes. This undermines the volume’s ability to further the state of research and to be a more useful aid to scholars by fully engaging with other works in the field. The many internal citations highlight this missed opportunity even more, making the collection excessively self-referential. The collection also offers varied and innovative contributions to the understanding of female authority and sanctity, religious practices, continental devotional practices, and many more aspects of late-medieval studies. This volume would be a welcome addition in both institutional libraries and on the shelves of most scholars of the period

Art · History · Medieval Literature and History