Valentina Castagna: Re-reading Margery Kempe in the 21^st Century

• Nicole Meier

The Book of Margery Kempe, lost for a long time and only known through extracts published in the 16th century, was rediscovered in 1934. It has received considerable scholarly attention over the years, in particular from the 1990s, when it benefited from the growing popularity of gender studies. It is indeed, as David Aers puts it, “one the most fascinating English texts of the later Middle Ages” (Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430. London and New York: Routledge, 1988, p. 74); and the book under review sets out to explore “more radical interpretations and rewritings of The Book of Margery Kempe” (p. 11). After an introduction in which she briefly recapitulates past and present critical approaches to the text, Castagna focuses first on The Book of Margery Kempe as autobiographical writing (Chapter 1).