Oral Life, Written Text: The Genesis of the Book of Margery Kempe

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the composition of the text we know as The Book of Margery Kempe; I shall allude briefly to the interpretative consequences of these comments, but such considerations are really the subject of another discussion. I suggest, by the application of Lusia Passerini's methodology in her oral history studies, that to treat Margery's text as a form of oral life-history is perhaps the best method of approach to its compositional integrity.1 The two Proemiums to the Book identify immediately three specific problems that bedevil the whole work. First, the priest who wrote the longer proemium makes no pretence that the narrative encompasses the entire life of its subject: 'Than this creatur, of whom thys thretys thorw the mercy of Ihesu schal schewen in party the lernying' (p. 2.5-6). We are not at liberty, then, to describe this enterprise as an autobiography, unless we choose to distort the range of that word's meaning beyond recognition.2 Second, the