Description
Book SynopsisA biography of the medieval English religious pilgrim Margery Kempe and a social and cultural history of her world.
Trade Review"...here Dr. Atkinson establishes the influence on the Book of previous writings especially those of St. Birgitta), but Dr. Cox forcefully demonstrates the basic originality of Margery Kempe...This is an excellent book that makes a great deal of sense out of a difficult-to-understand personality..." —Adris Newsletter
"Atkinson's exposition of the Book of Margery Kempe...represents the first full-length treatment of the Book since its discovery and edition in the 1930s, and one of the first attempts ever to enter sympathetically into the religious world and experience of a woman usually dismissed as "hysterical." After describing Kempe's relations with family and clergy, Atkinson sets her spirituality in the context of high medieval affective piety in Eng- land and ideas of female sanctity fostered on the Continent. The book is...an attractive and well-written introduction to Kempe's religious world, which, in the conclusion, is still further illuminated by drawing upon psychoanalytic and feminist studies." —Religious Studies Review
Table of ContentsPrefaceCHAPTER ONE - "A Short Treatise and a Comfortable": The Book of Margery Kemp
CHAPTER TWO - "A Haircloth in Thy Heart": Pilgrim and Mystic
CHAPTER THREE - "She Was Come of Worthy Kindred": The Burnham Family of King's Lynn
CHAPTER FOUR - "Her Ghostly Mother": Church and Clergy
CHAPTER FIVE - "In the Likeness of a Man": The Tradition of Affective Piety
CHAPTER SIX - "A Maiden in Thy Soul": Female Sanctity in the Late Middle Ages
CHAPTER SEVEN - "Ordained to Be a Mirror": Interpretations of Margery KempeSelected Bibliography
Index
