Female Agency and Spiritual Self-Fashioning in The Book of Margery Kempe

Resumen

This article aims to describe the emergence of a female authorship of the narrative in the Middle English period and examines the construction of female agency and spiritual authority in The Book of Margery Kempe, a narrative written during a time when most of the texts were created by men and the author, as of now, has one of the longest works of prose in English. The narrative speaks to the heart of the medieval period and is one of the most important texts in articulating the concerns, hopes, and negotiations of a laywoman in the socio-religious realm.  A key focus of the research is the construction and use of narrative devices such as the third person, emotional expression and the description of vivid interactions with the Divine which shape and articulate a spiritual self-identity that resists and creates a space within the socio-ecclesial systems of medieval society. The description of the clerics, the pilgrims and the wife of the court, decrees, and the mids, medieval female religiosity, especially the conflicts of the system. In conclusion, The Book of Margery Kempe is an unique example of a self-representing accounts of women in Middle English literature, as well as, one of the dame of the first accounts which demonstrated the ability of women to create, shape and transform discourses in literature and in spirituality. This research is of great relevance to the ongoing discussions of the role of women in authorship and the sacred in the premodern Europe.