The Book of Margery Kempe

274 Pages·1996·5.395 MB·English

by  Lynn Staley

The Book of
Margery Kempe

The Library of Congress has already cataloged the paperback as follows:
Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373.
[Book of Margery Kempe. English]
The book of Margery Kempe / edited by Lynn Staley.
p. cm. -- (Middle English texts)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-879288-72-9 (pbk.)
1.Kempe, Margery, b. ca. 1373--Biography. 2. Women authors,
English--Middle English, 1100-1500--Biography. 3. Christian
pilgrims and pilgrimages--Early works to 1800. 4. Mysticism-
-England--History--Middle Ages, 600-1500. 5. Christian women-
-Religious life--England. 6. Mysticism--England--Early works to
1800. I. Staley, Lynn, 1947- . II. Series: Middle English texts
(Kalamazoo, Mich.)
PR2007.K4A199 1996
248'.2'092--dc20
[B] 96-27254
CIP
ISBN 978-1-879288-72-9
eISBN 978-1-58044-470-5
© 1996 by the Board of The Medieval Institute
Cover design by Elizabeth King

Preface
supplying of some of the textual notes. Ms. Amster also converted my manuscript to Pagemaker,
did the line count, and placed the glosses at the foot of each page. I thank also Russell A. Peck
and Alan Lupack for the care they have devoted to the volume, and Melissa Bernstein for her
careful proofreading. And, finally, I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities
for its support in bringing the volume into print, and Thomas Seiler and Juleen Eichinger of The
Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, who oversaw the volume's final prepara
tion.
Vlll
The Book of Margery Kempe
Introduction
Written probably in the late 1430s, The Book of Margery Kempe is one of the most astonish
ing documents of late medieval English life. Its protagonist, who represents herself as its ulti
mate author, was not simply a woman but a woman thoroughly rooted in the world. 1 She
evinces the manners and the tastes neither of the court nor of the nunnery, but the piety, the
culture, the profit-oriented values, and the status-consciousness of the late medieval town. As a
member of the powerful guild of the Holy Trinity in the prosperous East Anglian town of
Bishops Lynn, Margery Kempe wrote from a secure position within the very world she subjects
to such careful scrutiny.' Kempe examines the fundamental conflicts and tensions of that world
by describing Margery's gradual and voluntary movement away from worldly prestige.
Margery's disengagement from conventional female roles and duties - and consequently her
daring rejection of the values of her fellow townspersons- is a response to her growing com
mitment to her spiritual vocation. Her attempt to gain personal, financial, and spiritual au
tonomy is a tale of radical reversal that touches us on many different levels. Margery does what
very few are able finally to do, and the fact that she does so as a woman enhances the force of
her story - she breaks away.
Her story begins conventionally enough. She is married, soon thereafter conceives her first
child, goes on to bear fourteen children and presumably to assume the responsibilities of a wife
and mother whose position in late medieval society is assured by the longstanding reputation of
her father, John Burnham, and the lesser but nonetheless worthy repute of her husband, John
1Throughoutt his IntroductionI will distinguish between Kempe, the authoro f the Book, and Margery,
its protagonist. See my early essay, "MargeryK empe: Social Critic," Journal of Medieval and Renais
sance Studies 22 (1992), 159-84, which was incorporated into chapter 2 of Margery Kempe 's Dissent
ing Fictions (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 1994).
2 In 1438 a Margery Kempe was admitted into the Guild of the Trinity of Lynn. See Meech, The Book
of Margery Kempe, Introduction,p . Ii and Appendix Ill, 1, p. 358. For a discussion of the social and
economic dynamics of late medieval towns, see Alice Stopford Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century (London: Macmillan, 1894. Reissued New York: Macmillan, 1907)