The Book of Margery Kempe (TEAMS Middle English Texts Series) - Softcover

Lynn Staley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1879288729 ISBN 13: 9781879288720

Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996

Synopsis

In this fresh, classroom-friendly volume, Margery Kempe, a married woman from fifteenth-century England, dictates her remarkable life story. Far from provincial, this extraordinary woman tells us about her business ventures in Lynn, her spiritual conversion and asceticism, and her travels all around Europe and the Holy Land while on pilgrimage. Kempe presents a splendidly detailed perspective of a woman from the rising middle class of the late Middle Ages, of a frequent pilgrim, and of a would-be saint gifted with spectacular crying. This edition, faithful to the original Middle English text but edited for accessibility to students, includes a gloss, notes, introduction, and a glossary, making The Book of Margery Kempe an excellent choice for any class interested in religion, gender, travel, or even daily life in late medieval Europe.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This is the first edition for sixty years of the earliest surviving autobiography in English, the unique account (dated 1436-8) of the extraordinary life, travels and revelations of Margery Kempe, a Norfolk housewife and mother, pilgrim, prophet and visionary. For the first time the original text is presented in an accessible form for modern readers, with full on-page glossing and a glossary of common words. The unrivalled on-page annotation provides the first commentary of its kind on the Book, bringing together the insights of scholarship on Kempe since the discovery of the manuscript in 1934, and setting the life of a remarkable Englishwoman in the social, political and spiritual context of her times.  An introduction provides up-to-date information and contexts for interpretation of a text central to courses on women’s studies, women’s history, and medieval literature. There is also a chronology of Kempe’s life, a helpful summary analysis of the chapters, and a full bibliography, in this new edition of a work now accepted as among the most compelling and significant English texts of the Middle Ages.

About the Author:

Lynn Staley is Professor of the humanities and medieval studies at Colgate University. She specializes in Chaucer, medieval literature and culture, Spenser, and early Renaissance literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1879288729
• ISBN 13: 9781879288720
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272