Lynn Staley is Professor of English at Colgate University and author of The Shepheardes Calender: An Introduction (Penn State, 1990) and The Voice of the Gawain-Poet (1984).
“Staley has used and made advances on the best recent writing on
Margery Kempe, and her book is a consolidation of the new position
that has been won for the Book in English literary culture and
history. Her distinction of ‘Kempe’ and ‘Margery’ will become the
standard mode of reference, I think, and her argument concerning
the narrative purposes and ‘fictional’ status of the story, and its
implication in questions of authority, in the broadest sense, will
be generally accepted as definitive.”—Derek Pearsall, Harvard
University
“In this extremely original study, Lynn Staley argues that the Book
of Margery Kempe is an exploratory and subtle work, exploring the
communities, practices, and values of her fellow Christians. It
turns out that this exploration is far more searching and critical
than any studies of Kempe’s work have appreciated. In elaborating
the relevant arguments, Staley offers a range of fascinating
readings of Kempe’s relations to Lollardy, to the vernacular, to
received rhetorics of gender, and to issues of national identity
and its sacralizing construction in the reign of Henry V. Not only
is the Book far more critical of late medieval church and of
mercantile life than existing scholarship has suggested, it
develops a radical investigation of the dominant social
institutions and forms of relationship in late medieval England.
Furthermore, Staley argues that Kempe produces a vision of a new
Ecclesia, one shaped by women and women’s relations, in the face of
a fragmented but habitually violent and persecutory set of ruling
institutions and practices. This book is a major contribution to
medieval studies.”—David Aers, Duke University
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
