HIS 216 & REL 216 Church History I: Ancient & Middle Ages

The Book of Margery Kempe, the earliest surviving autobiography in English (dated 1436-8), is a unique account of the extraordinary life, travels and revelations of a fifteenth-century Norfolk housewife and mother, pilgrim, prophet and visionary; it is one of the most compelling and significant English texts of the middle ages. This volume presents the original text in accessible form for modern readers, with on-page glossing and a glossary of common words.

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. 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 life cycle; religious drama and reenactment; autobiography and gender.

Daughter of a mayor of King's Lynn, wife of a Burgess there and mother of fourteen children, Margery Kempe (c. 1373-post 1438) was also a religious mystic and hysteric, who dictated her 'autobiography' to a scribe at the end of her life. In this history of her life, Anthony Goodman examines "The Book" to reconstruct as much of her conventional biography as the materials allow.

This work examines the ways in which medieval mystics attempt to orient themselves to God through metaphorically organizing the spaces of anchorhold, bedroom, and pilgrimage. In this work, I have examined one type of mystical metaphor, the familial metaphor. By using the familial relationship as a referent for their metaphors, mystics speak of the ways in which they understand God's motherhood, fatherhood, childhood, brotherhood, sisterhood and spousehood.