The Book of Margery Kempe - Couverture souple

Kempe, Margery

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0860122417 ISBN 13 : 9780860122418

Editeur : Burns & Oates Ltd, 1995

Synopsis

Because Margery Kempe was illiterate, her book was dictated to two scribes, showing an extraordinary recall of outer events and of her inner life over 40 years. Most of the manuscript disappeared, reappearing in 1934. Since then, two translations have been published. This book puts Margery's Middle English into fully comprehensible English. Margery was born in Kings Lynn around 1373, daughter of the mayor. Herself married to a brewer, she had 14 children and was worldly and ambitious. However, after her conversion, her life was devoted to seeking spiritual counsel (including that of Julian of Norwich) and going on pilgrimage. She gives an account of intense torments and joys, firmly believing that this tumult of inner experience came directly from God. She describes in detail her madness, financial ruin, religious ecstasies, marital problems and dangerous treks to distant shrines. This book is a portrait of a strange character who lived a colourful life in a turbulent, often tragic world. It has historical, biographical and feminist, as well as religious, interest and should be useful to students of English, history and theology. Two maps trace her travels in England and her pilgrimage overseas.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Though a familiar name, little was known about the English mystic Margery Kempe (c. 1373-c. 1440) for hundreds of years except that she had an association with the great Julian of Norwich. This all changed in 1934 with the discovery of The Book of Margery Kempe in a library where it had lain hidden for four hundred years. Finding Margery's own story was important not just because of the light it shed on her life, but it also turned out to be the first known autobiography in the English language. Even more intriguing to the experts of the day, this unique document was written by a woman.

But if anyone had expected to find her anything like her cloistered contemporary, Julian, they were in for something of a surprise. Far from being a typical holy woman, Margery Kempe was married and mother of fourteen children. Moreover, she had been a woman of substance, even running a large brewery for a time. After turning to religion, she traveled thousands of miles around the known world on pilgrimages to distant lands.

Beyond the circumstances of her life, what's most compelling about the text is the inner Margery that emerges. Her account of spiritual awakening, far from being a blissful episode is instead full of conflict and recrimination. What good was this new way of life if it caused her such trouble? Was this really the only way to lead a holy life? Margery remained unsure of the answers. But her patience in her struggle is a wonder to behold, and an example for us today.

Quatrième de couverture

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.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Burns & Oates Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1995
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0860122417
• ISBN 13: 9780860122418
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 224
• Éditeur: Triggs Tony D.
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible