Margery (Burnham) Kempe was a fifteenth-century Englishwoman known in her own time as a mystic and exemplar of the apostolic life of contemplative prayer and charitable works. Her life story, The Book of Margery Kempe (circa 1436-1438), recorded in two...

KEMPE, MARGERY (c. 1373–c.1440), English pilgrim, autobiographer, and professional holy woman. Kempe was the daughter of a prosperous merchant of King's Lynn, England. Although happily married, she tended to have hysterical fits during...

1373?-1438? English mystic and autobiographer whose dictated life story, The Book of Margery Kempe, is considered the first autobiography in English. A well-to-do matron who bore 14 children, Kempe started having visions and received the "gift...

Credited with composing the first extant autobiography in English, Kempe was a selfproclaimed mystic who dictated an account of her spiritual experiences to two scribes in The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436). This work has been critically evaluated as...

Margery Kempe (c. 1373 – after 1438) is known for writing The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. This book chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy...

Goodman, Anthony. Margery Kempe and Her World. (Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited. 2005. Pp. xx, 274. $32.99 paperback.) Those approaching Anthony Goodman's new work on Margery Kempe may be somewhat alarmed by the Series Editor's preface: "remarkable spiritual insights"; "her struggles to negotiate...

FIRST LET ME SAY that Margery Kempe, who lived from about 1373 to 1439 or later, was not a nobody. She came from the urban patriciate of Lynn (now King's Lynn), a thriving port in the most prosperous part of late-medieval England, East...

In the essay that follows, Lochrie asserts that medieval mystical texts, such as The Book of Margery Kempe, strive to “authorize the oral text within their written text.” Lochrie examines the way Kempe attempts to legitimize her oral text in The Book of Margery Kempe, and argues that this task is particularly difficult for Kempe due to her illiteracy.

In the following essay, Staley analyzes the episodic structure of The Book of Margery Kempe and Kempe's “sophisticated” choice of words, which works to both communicate and obfuscate meaning.

In the following essay, Shklar investigates the issue of Kempe's religious dissent, as it is revealed in The Book of Margery Kempe. Shklar explains that the Lollards—a sect of religious reformers under the leadership of John Wycliffe—offered a framework of discourse from which Kempe developed her own methods of dissent and sense of “vernacular spirituality.”

This essay explores the controversial case of 14th century mystic Margery Kempe. Questions if she was truly a mystic or just crazy.