Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life

Description

This is a new account of the late 14th century mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had 14 children, travelled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts her life, and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotation from Kempe's Book, and generous illustration, gives fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and her religious visions and later years put in context. Lastly there is the story of the rediscovery, in the 1930s, of the unique manuscript of her autobiography.

Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published many articles and books on medieval literature and culture including a translation of The Book of Margery Kempe (2016). He lives in London.

"Margery Kempe of Lynn Norfolk took pains in the decades of her prime to have her life as mother, wife, and pilgrim recorded for posterity. With erudition and sympathy, Bale frames Margery-a doubting, aching, troubled, and fiercely independent woman-within the European cities that staged her life, and so makes her more familiar than any fifteenth-century woman has ever been." -- Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, Queen Mary University of London, author of "Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe" "Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life is an evocative, vivid, and learned study of a complicated and intriguing text, The Book of Margery Kempe. Bale's captivating study blends rigorously researched biography with incisive analysis of the text. The book combines academic prowess with an almost poetic representation of people, events, and places, and brings to the fore the trials and triumphs of Kempe's negotiation of her mixed life." -- Laura Kalas, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature, Swansea University, author of "Margery Kempe's Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-course"