Description
This essay is about Margery Kempe, a woman from Lynn, England who wrote a book about her life. Margery Kempe was a mystic and hysteric, and her book is full of religious experiences and day-to-day life in Lynn during the late medieval period. Goodman uses her biography to explore the world of late medieval towns in England and Europe, and how they were different from each other.
Daughter of a mayor of King's Lynn, wife of a burgess there and mother of fourteen children, Margery Kempe (c. 1373-post 1438) was also a religious mystic and hysteric, who dictated her 'autobiography' to a scribe at the end of her life. In this history of her life, Anthony Goodman examines "The Book", to reconstruct as much of her conventional biography as the materials allow. Including her spiritual experiences, but focusing most particularly on her day-to-day life, he builds an intriguing picture of bourgeois society in late medieval Lynn, and the wider world of late medieval towns in England and Europe more generally.
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