John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (eds), A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe. Pp. xxiv + 246. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004. £50.00 (ISBN 1 84384 030 8).

Abstract

AS the volume's editors write in their preface, ‘[a] key rationale of A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe is to complement the existing, almost exclusively literary, scholarship on the Book with work that draws on more historical analysis’ (xviii). In meeting this objective, the volume is eminently successful, and in addressing a historical lacuna in Margery Kempe studies, it constitutes a genuinely enlightening addition to existing scholarship. The volume is introduced authoritatively by Barry Windeatt, who defends Margery against recent criticism of her as unsophisticated, and focuses on her ‘dialogue with the divine’ as central to the text. The essays then proceed in their primarily historical analysis of Margery Kempe's spirituality in its context. It is very useful to have a collection of essays which recognizes Margery's undeniable unconventionality while setting her clearly and authoritatively within her contemporary context. One such essay is that of Kim M. Phillips, whose ‘Margery Kempe and the Ages of Woman’ examines both the character of Margery's likely life experience (using a social-historical approach) and the Book's representation of that experience (through a cultural-historical lens), suggesting that we need to deploy both methods of reading if we are to gain a fuller understanding of the text. Another notable contributor in this category is Kate Parker, whose ‘Lynn and the Making of a Mystic’ is extremely informative in its examination of Margery's social milieu. In particular, it focuses usefully on the town of Lynn itself, illuminating in some detail John Brunham's considerable social standing and the impact that this might have had on the manner in which Margery was viewed in her home town.