Philosophy Commons^™

The Mystic As Pilgrim: Margery Kempe And The Tradition Of Nonfictional Travel Narrative, James P. Helfers

Quidditas

Margery Kempe, fifteenth-century pilgrim and female mystic, stirred up controversy in her own day and continues to do so in the present. This controversy, then and now, centers on both Margery's spiritual life and its social expression. While she was alive, her contemporaries disagreed over the validity of her mystical experience and the way that experience manifested itself; now this conflict continues in contemporary critical debates over the nature of her literary and spiritual significance. The Book of Margery Kempe has heretofore been analyzed as autobiography, mystical treatise, devotional manual, and feminist tract. Clarissa Atkinson, for instance, sees the book …