Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh

Introduction

There is hardly anyother calami? more aptto do harm or that is more incurable [than the unbridlecl speech of \i.omen]. If its only consequencewere the immense loss of time, this would alreadybe s~lfticient for the devil. Rut you must knokv that there is somethingelse to it: the insatiable itchto see and to speak,not to mention. . .the itch to In 1415, Jean Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, Lvrote a treatise in response to the alarming claims of St. Bridget and other women to mystical reIdation and prophecy. Dep~obntio1~e spivituurn represents Gerson 's attempt to provide guidelines for the Church by ~vhichit could identie true mystical inspiration and condemn false religious fenlor. In this treatise, Gerson warns against the religious appetites of women and adolescents (\vhom he lumps together) ~vhichmake them prone to unbridled speech and passions.2 In the quotation above, Gerson specificallv addresses the problem of woman's speech in conjunctionwith the appetitive faculties, of sight and touch, in particular. The excessivequality of woman's speech is linked implicitl\l with that "insatiable itch to touch," and with bodiliness. Behind the visions and speech of women mystics, Gerson senses that "something else" ~vhich renders it calamitous, that is, the \vomanls body. The word he chooses to describe her mystical desire, "itch," is a telling one because it imparts some of Gerson's olvn horror and disgust at the insufficiently ~vlortifiedfemale flesh.3 This book begins with Gerson's insatiable itch not in order to draw attention to his misogyny or to nl&e light of his point; rather, I take it as the starting point for my study of one of the most controversial of late medieval m\.stics, Margery Kempe, in order to highlight what is at stake in any discussion of her. The intersection of \voman's body and her speech is a crucial problem in any analysis of late medieval piety. We cannot begin to discuss ~vhat Gerson means by his critique until we ask questions about medieval culture's understanding of the female body and about women's speech and writing. In turn, issues surrounding Margery Kempe's mystical practices, her autobiographical mystical treatise, and her methods as an author dictating her ~vork to a scribe a~vait a theoretical investigation of the 2 Introduction insatiable itch, including ~vhat it means for Lvomen to speak and write the body in their mystical visions and treatises. "Writing the body" is a phrase I borrokv from contemporary feminist theory.4 In using the phrase, however, I am not adopting contemporani understandngs of what it means for a woman to "write her body." Instead, I want to argue that Gerson is objecting to a kmd of bcriture~minine in the Middle Ages, that is, a feminine writing of the body. This writing of women mystics, continental as well as English, must be viewed, in turn, against the suppression of the female body in language. While all such suppression exists within-and in the semice of-patriarchal culture, it varies through languages and cultures and across time. One of the central purposes of this book is to describe the repression of the female bodv in the context of medievalculture, rather than solelythrough contemporary theoretical analysis. Repression of the female body, as we shall see, takes a different form in the Middle Ages than it does in contemporaryculture, and therefore the woman writer's task of adopting a language must be viewed specifically within her historical and cultural context. TheBook ofMagery Kempe is positioned within this twin cultural and theoretical focus. Contemporary discussion of the female body in language is particularly relevant to the study of Margery Kempe and late medieval mysticism because of the presence in both of an emergent concern with the body in mystical imagery and language which so alarmed Gerson. Carolyn Walker Bynum has abundantly discussed and documented the figuration of the female body in late medieval mysticism.5 Both the medieval idea of the imitation of Christ as an imitation of his humanity-his bodiliness-and the increasingly graphic representations of that bodiliness are defining features of late medieval mysticism and of women's mystical experiencesin particular. The answer to the question of why this is so has changed considerably since 1924 when Huizinga invoked Gerson himself to explain what happened in the late Middle Ages: Mysticism is brought into the streets. Many people take to it, without suitable direction, and indulge in too rigid fasts, too protracted vigils, and too...