Margery Kempe's Meditations: The Context of Medieval Devotional Literature, Liturgy and Iconography (review)

Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing are acknowledged luminaries in the starburst of contemplative writing that dawned over England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Richard Rolle, who ushered in the spectacle, and Margery Kempe, who provided the finale, are sometimes seen as adjuncts to these central figures – oddities who confirm our era's science-based scepticism about the whole group. Yet Rolle and Margery have much to offer their readers, and commentators have adopted a range of approaches in arriving at literary and social insights. The book reviewed here rejects former interpretations of Margery's story as embodying an unconscious rebellion against social hierarchy – 'the kind of criticism which sees her spirituality as self-taught or inarticulate or in opposition to the Church' (p. 2). Instead it approaches her Book as the record of a spiritual journey that drew on sources of instruction and practice commonly available to orthodox laywomen. Thus, as well as presenting a new analysis of Margery's narrative methods, Margery Kempe's Meditations sketches some of the furnishings of the pious late medieval mind.

In paying attention to the whole text, the discussion reverses the approach of writers who extrapolate to the medieval context from a limited number of repeated metaphors and motifs. By contrast, Yoshikawa traces standard devotional elements through Margery's entire exposition of her spiritual journey. These include the liturgy, Marian piety, popularised contemplative techniques based on the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditations on the Life of Christ, hagiographic models, iconography, and theological concerns like the discernment of spirits and the problem of suffering. Prior commentary has identified some of these sources, but the present study conveys more inclusively the richness of the Christian culture on which Margery drew. Furthermore, Yoshikawa's holistic focus enables her to discern the named cultural influences in the Book's sequence of five meditations on Christ's life, which are interspersed with Margery's accounts of her conversations with Christ. The discovery that Margery's meditations follow the liturgical sequence of Advent, the Passion, Easter and the Purification of the Virgin is a significant contribution to scholarship in the field.

As the argument evolves, it soothes any doubt entertained by the reader that Margery's narrative has been manipulated to fit a Procrustean schema. For example, Yoshikawa admits that the correspondences she discovers between Margery's visualization in Advent of Christ's birth narrative and the liturgy of the Hours in the Prymer are not always exact (p. 42). However, the parallels she adduces on the basis of the venerations of the Annunciation at Matins, the Visitation at Lauds, the Nativity at Prime and so on, are cumulatively persuasive. Except for the Annunciation to the Shepherds commemorated at Terce, allusions in Margery's meditation match the whole sequence. They also replicate links to the Passion suggested by the liturgy, such as the parallel between Mary's swaddling clothes for the baby Christ and the shroud in which she wraps Christ's crucified body (p. 43). Yoshikawa's citing of pictures in the Prymer and frescoes and statues in parish churches recognizes yet another layer in the elaborate cultural scaffolding that sustains Margery's Book.

Margery Kempe's Meditations extends its respect for the text to extensive, sometimes excessive, quotation, and to a discussion of the words which Margery repeatedly applies to her spiritual life: 'meditacyon', 'contemplacyon', 'visyons', 'wonderful spechys & dalyawns', and 'felyngys and reuelacyons'. Explorations of words in their contexts, assisted by the Middle English Dictionary, are a rich resource for researchers. Here they support an exposition of the roles of meditation, imagination and memory in the composition of the Book; enable the keying of inner with outer events; and deepen the reader's understanding of Margery's spiritual evolution.

To re-accompany Margery on her earthly pilgrimage with...