llegar a ser autores. 2006.pdf

8/13/2019 LLEGAR A SER AUTORES. 2006.pdf

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Margery Kempe and her Becoming Authores s 323

Valentina Castagna

Margery Kempe and her Becoming Authoress

For in truth I tell you, just as I spoke to St Bridget, just soI speak to you, daughter, and I tell you truly that every

word that is written in Bridgets book is true, and throughyou shall be recognised as truth indeed.

(The Book of Margery Kempe, 83)

1. Introduction

My essay aims to analyze the ways in which The Book of MargeryKempe(1436-38), widely considered the first autobiography in Eng-lish1(Mueller 1984; Stanton 1984; Smith 1987; Benstock 1988),reveals the figure of Margery Kempe as an upper middle-classwoman of the late Middle Ages, whose written account of her mys-

tical experience enabled her to establish an identity as a public fig-ure. Margery establishes her image as the author of her book andgives it the function of exemplum. I intend to show how Margeryuses imitatio, following the medieval literary tradition, in order tolegitimize her authorial voice. She mentions and compares herself toother female mystics who also wrote about their spiritual experi-ences, or had them written down by their confessors, including

1It is significant that this is also mentioned in the entry autobiography in TheDictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory(1999).


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Valentina Castagna324

Julian of Norwich and St Bridget of Sweden, whose writings andfame were already well known in her day.

Thus Margery establishes her literary authority through the useof certain strategies in the composition of her book. Although theintervention of the scribes to whom she dictates her experience, is,to a certain degree, undeniable,2 it emerges from the events, espe-cially from Margerys comments on gender roles and her argumentswith religious and political authorities, that Margery is aware of theidea of authority, which, above all, she sees in the external Authority

of God (i.e., that which legitimates her text, travels, and public-speaking). Margery is aware of the social conventions that wouldsilence her, but makes use of them by legitimizing herself throughthe figure of Christ, who asks her to hand down her visions andprivate dalliance with him.

With regard to textual and contextual elements, I aim to showhow her book conveys the image of a clever woman who employsher powers of speech and her knowledge with great determination,

in order to legitimize her authorial voice, especially during the openconfrontations with the finest and most powerful inquisitors, theofficial holders of the W/word. Margery Kempe was, in fact, accusedof being a Lollard (You shall be burnt, you false Lollard!, The Bookof Margery Kempe, 64). Particular reference is made here to her habitof preaching in public, for Lollards actually acknowledged womensright to speak and teach the Word of Christ. However, because of

her clever use of the word and her knowledge of Holy Writ, shealways managed to avoid the stake.In this way the image of the mystic becomes connected with that

of a deft authoress:an attentive observer who was aware of the cul-tural, religious and socio-economic conditions of her time and who,despite claiming to be illiterate, was able skilfully to deploy herknowledge of literary tradition, and in particular the tradition ofreligious writing.

2 L nn St l J hn n (1991) h r m int in th t th fi r f th crib


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Margery Kempe and her Becoming Authoress 325

2. Complexity and Modernity in The Book of Margery Kempe

TheBook presents the spiritual life of an English laywoman wholived between the end of the fourteenth century and the beginningof the fifteenth. Margery was a burgess of Kings Lynn in Norfolk.She came from a well-known family of the town; her father, JohnBrunham, had several times been alderman and also mayor.

Using her life as exemplum, Margery tells the story of her lifebeginning with her spiritual birth; she does it at Christs request,

twenty years after her first vision, with the aid of a scribe (probablyone of her sons), later replaced by a scribe from the clergy after hisdeath (ibid.: 33-37).

My interest in theBookbegan after a reading of The True Tale ofMargery Kempe(1985), a radio play by Eva Figes. Interestinglyenough, the script by the Anglo-German writer, who often makesuse of the method of (critical) rewriting, leaves the story and thewords of the medieval mystic mostly unaltered.3 Her work seems to

be a mere dramatization of theBook,which, it has to be said, laysitself open to this sort of media translation; the visions describedby Margery, and particularly those regarding the Passion and theNativity of Christ and the Virgin Mary (where Margery plays anactive role), echo the scenes from medieval mystery plays.

Given Eva Figess well-known feminist commitment, and herattempt to give a voice to marginalized fictional characters,4 one

would have expected a subversive reworking of the text; but on acareful reading of theBookone finds that Figess interpretation ofthe text can be fully shared, because if one takes into account femi-nist views on the silencing of womens voices in a patriarchal society,then the text is already a subversive one. Margery emerges as anempowered woman in medieval Christian society, and although itmight be hazardous to speak of ante litteramfeminism,5 it is unde-

3The only difference (at once manifest in the script) is that Figes places a particularstress on Margerys sexuality by inserting in the radio play love-making sounds inrd r t hi hli ht th int rpl f pirit lit nd lit in th B k


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niable that a certain gender awareness is present in that she pointsout sexist discrimination.

Margerys text elicits a series of questions linked to its genesis (lit-erary genre, authorship, aim, and circulation), which make criticalanalysis highly controversial and have divided criticism ever since therediscovery of the manuscript in 1934 (for a reconstruction of thedifferent readings, see Beckwith 1992; Del Lungo Camiciotti 2002).

TheBookhas been defined as an autobiography, a devotionaltreatise (Del Lungo Camiciotti 2002; the Proem itself describes it as

this), an oral life-story (Ross 1992), and also the first novel in Eng-lish (Staley Johnson 1994). The problem of placing it in a particularliterary genre arises from the content of Margerys narrative andfrom the textual presence of the scribes.

Her account abounds with details from daily life and materialpreoccupations, which made the first modern readers think thatMargerys mysticism was not genuine, and perhaps too materialistic,particularly when compared to her contemporary, Julian of Nor-

wich, whose works are more theological.Margery lived in an epoch of religious instability, and the unbal-

anced Catholic world, threatenedby heresy, is presented in the text.Margery was accused of being a Lollard, a disciple of John Wyclif.The Wycliffite sect was critical of the clergy and proposed certaininnovations in the religious life of lay people. They suggested thatthe Bible should be read in the vernacular and that it might be read

privately. They also thought women should be able to preach inpublic and administer the sacraments.When it was rediscovered and published by Hope Emily Allen in

1934, the Bookwas read as a mere historical document or as theconfessional text of a peculiar mystic. However, the complexity ofthe figure of the protagonist and the peculiar aspects of her mysti-cism posed several problems of interpretation. The persistent down-to-earth images constantly projected in the narrative seemed at vari-

ance with the models of mysticism in the Catholic tradition andapparently exalted material preoccupations ill suited to icons of ho-


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in the eyes of the Church, Margery was also seen and in some sensepsycho-analyzedas a hysteric.

This might be one of the reasons why all traces of the text werelost for so many centuries after its composition. Even thoughMargerys name kept circulating, thanks to the purged version ofWynkyn de Worde (c. 1501, which nevertheless contained only themore canonical passages of the text), theBookdisappeared for thefive subsequent centuries.

These are also examples of the different interpretations given to

the Book: was Margery a hysteric, or a real mystic? Or was she, sim-ply, a more or less pious woman with clear ideas on the socialrole ofthe Saints in the Catholic world?

As mentioned above, it was in 1934 that the only survivingmanuscript of the work (London, British Library MS Additional61823) was discovered in the possession of the Catholic Butler-Bowdon family. This was probably a copy of the original and wassigned by the amanuensis Salthows. On the manuscript are several

annotations by monks from Mount Grace Priory (in Yorkshire);those in red ink, in particular, are evidence of the way theBookmust have been used at the time that it was composed. As Parsonssuggests in her close study of the manuscript, Carthusian advisorsmight have recommended theBookto women of the same socialstanding as Margery, because a woman could particularly identifywith the spiritual struggles and devotional practices of a married

woman such as Margery, learning to emulate her successes and avoidher failures (Parsons 2001: 146).Bearing in mind that the female mystical tradition was, at the

time, mostly of continental origin, a text in the vernacular (whichcould thus circulate more easily) relating the religious experience ofa laywoman, who gave herself tirelessly up to prayer, pilgrimages andSamaritan life (never forgetting her earthly occupations), had thepotential for deeper influence on English mothers and wives than an

anchoress like Julian of Norwich might achieve. To a certain extent,Margery may have appeared to them like a heroine in a novel, and


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had a certain circulation, there are no further traces of it after thesuppression of Mount Grace Priory in 1539. Parsons believes thatSalthowss manuscript must have been passed on to the Butler-Bowdons in order to rescue it from the destruction of Mount Grace(ibid.: 153).

It is mainly during (and since) the 1980s that studies of The Bookof Margery Kempehave begun to flourish, albeit in a new direction.This is mainly due to the Gender Studies approaches to MedievalStudies, but also to a new emphasis on History and Economics (see,

for instance, Aers 1988 and Staley 1994).The text began to be read as a product of the society from which

it originated, in a thriving English town, Kings Lynn, a centre ofinternational trade, where the mercantile mentality with its eco-nomic preoccupations were part of everyday life and, therefore, notto be denied in the educationof a woman of social standing such asMargery. As Aers points out,

the mercantile world [] was Margerys natural and unquestionedelement. [] She had fourteen children. She herself was, for a time,an independent businesswoman, but gradually became as mobile asthe fictional Wife of Bath or the figure of the poet in Piers Plowman,a pilgrim to Jerusalem and Europe, a visionary and a mystic. (Aers1988: 73)

These readings account for Margerys resolute personality, whichsurfaces more and more frequently as the narrative progresses.

Margery seems an ambiguous figure, divided between mysticism anda wish for public acknowledgement, between the private role of wifeand the public one of mystic and prophetess, widely challenged bymost of the authorities at the time.

The complexity of this medieval text (and of its female authorialvoice) has thus latterly been acknowledged. It throws up issues thatare still argued over in contemporary literature, such as that of wom-ens identity, and the influence of patriarchal society on the relaying

of womens image, concerning which we may borrow Aerss words:It [The Book of Margery Kempe] is one of the most fascinating English


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than any other writing from this era, Margery Kempes draws atten-tion to many of the complex processes through which female identity

might be made in a particular community and class. The Bookresistsconventional sublimations of such processes and the painful conflictsthey entailed. This resistance makes it often an extremely movingtext, after all these years, across the most thorough transformations ofeconomic systems and mentalities. Thorough, undoubtedly, but per-haps less than total: could it be that at least some of her strugglesresonate in our own domestic culture and have not been tran-scended? (ibid.)

In the analysis of medieval texts, then, a gendered approach ac-quires ever greater importance for any attempt to rediscover a gene-alogy of women writers (Smith 1987; Mueller 1984). Smith, in par-ticular, considers Margery as a forerunnerof womens autobio-graphical writing (locating her within the tradition created by West-ern feminist criticism, together with Margaret Cavendish, CharlotteCharke, Harriet Martineau and Maxime Hong Kingston). Themain instrument for interpreting the text becomes the laying bare of

those social mechanisms that determine the subaltern role of womenwithin the family and society itself (and its representations). Onemight discover in this unveiling the intentions of a woman writerdetermined to portray herself as an active character, not privately,but publicly, and by assuming different functions: above all that ofcommunicating Christs message as authorizing voice. Against thisbackground it is however important to show how Margerys en-

counters with lay and religious authorities were resolved thanks toher powers of argument (Long 1994: 101).

3.Literary Authority and the Value of the Word

Tackling the question of literary authority and authorship in re-ligious texts is always difficult and risky. The written word, in these

texts, is always said to be inspired by an external, transcendent au-thority, which, in the Judaeo-Christian literary tradition, is that of


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whose literary authority is also mediated by institutionalized malecontrol, whether by the legitimization of the Inquisition or by inter-vention in the texts themselves by father confessors.

This essay intends to examine how The Book of Margery Kempemight be considered the result of the authors desire to reveal herselfto the reading public. In the historical and social context of the ep-och, to write of ones own experience meant negotiating an appro-priate means of communication that might also be accepted by theChurch. As one reads the Book,one notices that the authors aware-

ness gradually increases, and that Margery uses her growing author-ity in order to oppose the members of political and ecclesiasticalinstitutions (legitimate authorities in themselves, perhaps, but notlegitimized in the manner of her own personal authority).

Although the Bookis a devotional treatise, if we analyze it as anearly autobiography we also have to bear in mind the cultural andsocio-economic background, so as not to deny the literary value ofthe book. One cant, of course, say with certainty what Margerys

intentions were when she set to work, but the text clearly showssigns of rebellion against corrupt institutions and a certain self-cel-ebration, which might suggest that she herself chose to write downher story using Gods authorization and the written tradition ofother mystics, in order to give her book literary authority.

The strength of the Bookseems to lie in the authors powers ofargument (Long 1994: 101), in her interest in contemporary soci-

ety and its ills, and in what stirs around her or, perhaps more perti-nently, what is stagnating.Margery understands the role of the writings by mystics among

both religious and lay people, and makes good use of these to legiti-mize her own act of writing and the inherent attempt to claim herown subjectivity through the text, and to liberate herself from theshackles of her private roles of mother and wife.

Margery got to know two different kinds of clergy. There were

those confronting her, the corrupt ones, and the devout ones help-ing her on her way to holiness. Among the latter were those who


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subjectivity beyond the traditional family roles. Sheila Delany main-tains that religion is for Margery a means of self-assertion:

Religion is Margerys way of asserting her ownership of herself, ofovercoming alienation while simultaneously providing the mostpoignant testimony to that alienation [] One could also say thatMargery discovered a way to use the system against the system away to leave home, travel, establish a name for herself, and mean-while remain both chaste and respectable. Religion became her wayof combating the special oppression of women, which she in no wayunderstood as oppression, though she suffered and rebelled against its

experiential weight. (Delany 1994: 84-85)

Paradoxically, though, Julia Long says, it is by denying herselfthrough the authority of God that Margery affirms her subjectivity:

Kempe paradoxically gains a presence through her own absence.She is allowed a voice only inasmuch as she claims Christ is speakingthrough her. Her own presence is immaterial; she is legitimate onlyas a vessel of God. (Long 1994: 100)

Margery always seems to be struggling to define herself, to findthe right path. In her psycho-analytical study, Long stressesMargerys courage in pursuing the achievement of her selfhood:

In the case of Margery Kempe, her vigorous striving for, and successin achieving, a subject position which is a refusal of the victim rolecomes across strongly in her autobiography. Given this, it seems tome that the [story of this woman stands as testimony to her] courageand to the possibility of negotiating forms of marginalisation in the

struggle for subjectivity. (Long 1994: 107-108)

The Book of Margery Kempepresents a peculiar game of authori-zations.Like any religious text, it follows a precise path: God revealshimself to a holy woman, redeems her from her sins and inspires herwith holy words to be written down and passed on to other sinnersawaiting salvation. Margerys mysticism responds to most of thecharacteristics of mystic speech described by De Certeau in Heterolo-

gies (1980), both in what he defines as modus loquendi and modusagendi and in the interplay of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. De


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the salvific role among sinners. He writes:

Divine utterance is both what founds the text, and what it mustmake manifest. That is why the text is destabilized: it is at the sametime besidethe authorized institution, but outside it and in what au-thorizes that institution, i.e. the Word of God. (De Certeau 1980:92)

Margery also displays a clear hierarchy in her Book(God-Saints-clergy-scribes-herself). This hierarchy consists of words legitimatingher textual authority while being legitimated by extra-textual powers

(such as God). I believe Margery is in control of this process andstarts building it up from the very beginning of the Book.

She legitimizes her writing by mentioning other representativesof the mystical written tradition who passed down their personalaccounts; the Preface, written by the first scribe, also hints at this. Infact, the composition of the Book starts on the next day after MaryMagdalene (The Book of Margery Kempe,38), 23rdJuly, which, asDel Lungo (2001: 110) informs us, also corresponds to the day of StBridgets death. This is no accident. I personally think this is a nar-rative strategy adopted by Margery in order to give authority to herwork. St Bridget and her book are often mentioned by Margery. Onone occasion, in particular, Margery explicitly draws attention to thesimilarities of their mystical experiences and at the same time,through the words of Christ, doubly legitimizes her writing as bothliterary and religious text. God in fact tells her: For in truth I tell

you, just as I spoke to St Bridget, just so I speak to you, daughter,and I tell you truly that every word that is written in Bridgets bookis true, and through you shall be recognized as truth indeed (TheBook of Margery Kempe,83).

Apart from St Bridget, whom Margery mentions again elsewhere,other mystics and mystical writings of the time appear in the textand lend authority to the Book:Hiltons book, Brides book (StBridgets), Stimulus Amoris and Incendium Amoris (ibid.: 75).

The revelations Christ makes to her, Margery says, are not compara-ble to any of these texts (ibid.).


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entirely true. Near the beginning of the book, when Margery tells ofthe accident that happened to her in the church of St Margaret, shesays she was with her book in her hand (ibid.: 56). This mightconfirm the thesis that Margery wasnt completelyilliterate but wasperhaps without Latin and so did not belong to high culture. Also,speaking of style, Staley (1991; 1994) maintains, as mentionedabove, that the figure of the scribe is a trope again lending authorityto the Book. Personally I dont accept this view, but I do agree withher when she says that the influence of the scribes must have been

somehow limited to that of amanuenses, a role which was, needlessto say, common at the time.

As Del Lungo Camiciotti (2001) suggests in her ample introduc-tion to the Italian version of the Book,analyzing it mainly from areligious perspective, the style of the narrative often takes on thetone of a biblical account and Margerys experiences of persecutionare identified with Christs Passion: her theatrical gestures, as alreadysaid above, recall those of the mystery plays.

Another aspect of Margerys (successful) attempt to lend author-ity to her holy status (and hence her Book) is her visits to well-known representatives of the clergy.

Her encounters with the Authorities are of two kinds: someMargery chooses to meet in order to ask for guidance and advice;others Margery is forced to meet when she is accused of heresy and,more covertly, of being socially disruptive.

Both types of meeting are successfully negotiated thanks to thewomans (and here I again borrow Longs (1994: 101) expression)powers of argument. In the end, Margery is always publicly recog-nized as innocent and holy. All attempts to bring evil upon her failand always recoil on her persecutors, who are publicly exposed fortheir evil and corrupt behaviour thanks to her bold speeches. Sowhen the Archbishop of York, who brings to mind Pontius Pilate(What shall I do with her?), tells her that he has heard she is a

very wicked woman, she replies rather boldly (the narrative oftenunderlines her answers during these encounters using this adverb):


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amend while you are here (The Book of Margery Kempe, 163).Something else that surfaces from Margerys trials is her force of

subversion of gender roles. Accused of being a Lollard, she answerscorrectly to all the Articles of faith, but her trials continue on a so-cial level; the clerics that advise the Archbishop of York tell him wewill not allow her to dwell among us, because the people have faithin her talk[my italics], and perhaps she might lead some of themastray (ibid.: 163). Margery is a threat to social order because mostof her acts go against her gender (she speaks of holy matters and tells

tales from the Bible), so she is overtly reproached because shedoesnt keep to womens roles:

So, as she went forth toward Beverly with the said yeomen and thefriars before said, they met many men of the country, who said untoher, Damsel, forsake this life that you have, and go spin and card asother women do, and suffer not so much shame and so much woe.(Ibid.: 95-96)

Margery continues speaking about the teachings of God and isaccepted by several clerics who recognize her holiness and wish toshare in her experiences and learn the word and message of Godfrom her. Directly after the confrontation with the Archbishop ofYork, Margery appears to be even more fortified than before by theawareness that she is recognized for her wits and her knowledge ofHoly Writ. She states this quite clearly, and emphasizes the intellec-tual level she has achieved, whilst repeatedly mentioning the au-

thorization from God:Then she, going back again to York, was received by many people,and by very worthy clerics,who rejoiced in our Lord, who had givenher uneducated as she was the witand wisdomto answer so manylearned menwithout shame or blame, thanks be to God. (Ibid.: 167,italics mine)

4.Conclusion


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ing is the interplay of spirituality and sexuality in the text, the wayin which Margery tells of her private dalliance with Christ. Herlanguage shows the main characteristics of mystic speech and shedemonstrates her knowledge of mystic textsby mentioning them,and also in the way she describes her divine communication withGod, it being like a fire burning her from the inside.

This is an issue that has triggered different responses at both acritical and a creative level, for the text has generated a number ofrecent rewritings. One of the latter is, as mentioned above, Eva

Figess dramatization in The True Tale of Margery Kempe;another isthe provocative novelMargery Kempe(1994) by Robert Glck. Herethe writer specifically draws on Margerys sexual peculiarity and cre-ates a double narrative, intertwining her love for the young Christ inone of the first chapters to his love for a young man. This novelsupports the idea of Margerys queerness.

Her non-orthodox behaviour is also at the centre of CarolynDinshaws Getting Medieval (1999), a queerstudy stressing Mar-

gerys peculiar religious behaviour.All these responses together make the debate on The Book of

Margery Kempemore lively, and highlight the physicality ofMargerys language, not only when in mystical conversation withChrist, but also when confronting her adversaries. The tale of thepriest and the bear that she tells the Archbishop of York, in order toreveal his wickedness, is a clear example of her language of the body

(see The Book of Margery Kempe, 165-166), which in itself woulddeserve a full study.All these elements show The Book of Margery Kempeto be an ex-

traordinary work that is not easy to interpret. Its multilayered struc-ture requires different perspectives of interpretation, and conse-quently the debate on the Bookremains open.

Starting from the premise that this really is an early autobiogra-phy, I have shown the textual and contextual elements which have

led me to believe that behind the text there lies a literary mind con-sciously making use of narrative strategies, such as imitatio, which


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and to the strategies that Margery employs in order to emerge as anauthor who is aware, not at all uneducated, but full of wits andwisdom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am extremely grateful to Professor Marina Bondi for putting me in touchwith Professor Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti and to the latter for giving meuseful information on her translation of and articles about The Book of Margery

Kempe.I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Vincenzo Lo Cascio

for helping me to trace some texts only available in Holland and especially forhis advice and encouragement.

REFERENCES

Aers D., 1988, Community, Gender and Individual Identity. English Writing 1360-1430, Routledge, London and New York.

Barratt A. (ed.), 1992, Womens Writings in Middle English, Longman, London andNew York.

Beckwith S., 1992, Problems of Authority in Late Medieval English Mysticism:Language, Agency, and Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe, Exemplaria4(1), pp. 171-199.

Benstock S. (ed.), 1988, The Private Self. The Theory and Practice of Womens Auto-biographical Writings,Routledge, London and New York.

Cholmeley K., 1947,Margery Kempe. Genius and Mystic,Longmans, Green and

Co, London, New York, Toronto.Cuddon J.A., 1999, The Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory (revised byC.E. Preston), Penguin, London.

De Certeau M., 1980, Mystic Speech, in M. De Certeau, [1980] 1986, Heterolo-gies. Discourse on the Other, Engl. trans. B. Massumi, Manchester U.P., Man-chester, pp. 80-100.

Delany S., 1994, Sexual economics, in R. Evans and L. Johnson (eds), FeministReadings in Middle English Literature. The Wife of Bath and All her Sect,Routledge, London and New York, pp. 72-87.

Del Lungo Camiciotti G. (ed.), 2002, Il libro di Margery Kempe. Autobiografia

spirituale di una laica del Quattrocento,ncora, Milano.Dinshaw C., 1999, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Post-

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Figes E., 1977, Nellys Version,Secker and Warburg, London.Figes E., 1985, The True Tale of Margery Kempe,Radio 2, BBC, London.

Glck R., 1994,Margery Kempe,Serpents Tail, London.Long J., 1994, Mysticism and Hysteria, in R. Evans and L. Johnson (eds), 1994,

Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature. The Wife of Bath and All her Sect,Routledge, London and New York, pp. 88-111.

Mueller J.M., 1984, Autobiography of a New Creatur: Female Spirituality,Selfhood, and Authorship in The Book of Margery Kempe, in D.C. Stanton(ed.), 1984, The Female Autograph,U. of Chicago P., Chicago and London.

Neuburger V., 1994,Margery Kempe. A Study in Early English Feminism, PeterLang, Berne, Berlin, New York.

Parsons K., 2001, The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempeand hisLay Audience, in K. Kerby-Fulton and M. Hilmo (eds), The Medieval Profes-sional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempeand Gower,ELS University of Victoria, Victoria (B.C.), pp. 143-158.

Ross R.C., 1992, Oral Life, Written Text: The Genesis of The Book of MargeryKempe, The Yearbook of English Studies 22, pp. 226-237.

Shklar R., 1995, Cobhams Daughter: The Book of Margery Kempeand the Powerof Heterodox Thinking, The Modern Language Quarterly. A Journal of LiteraryHistory56 (3), pp. 277-304.

Smith S., 1987,A Poetics of Womens Autobiography, Indiana U.P., Bloomington

and Indianapolis.Staley Johnson L., 1991, The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of LiteraryAuthority in the Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe,Speculum66, pp. 820-838.

Staley L., 1994,Margery Kempes Dissenting Fictions,Pennsylvania State U.P., Uni-versity Park (Pa.).

Stanton D.C. (ed.), 1984, The Female Autograph,U. of Chicago P., Chicago andLondon.

Windeatt B., 1985, The Book of Margery Kempe, Penguin, Harmondsworth.


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