The Book of Margery Kempe is the single work attributed to the late-medieval religious visionary, Margery Kempe (b.1373 – d. after 1438). The Book was rediscovered in 1934 after a long time in obscura, and has been subject to multiple scholarly interpretations, many of which have sought to pathologize Margery Kempe as ill or disordered due to the many descriptions of her noisy crying and collapsing during the visions and raptures that she experienced. As Sarah Salih has attested here, the Book side-lines Kempe’s family and domestic life in favour of a focus on her qualifications as a religious exemplum – as Salih puts it, it is an “autohagiography” (Salih, 2001). It is certainly a work of collaboration, engendered by Kempe’s dictation of her experiences to a
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Citation: Kalas, Laura. "The Book of Margery Kempe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 June 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6274, accessed 12 December 2024.]