Visions, Power, and Margery Kempe

Abstract

Abstract: Texts including visionary English women of the Middle Ages range ' om Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People to The Book of Margery Kempe. The visionary experience authorizes the female voice and grants the visionary the opportunity to exercise feminine infl uence on masculinist culture. Generally, in these texts dream theories and discourse on women are rhetorically combined to authorize the power of these women, whose power is then refl ected back on the church or church entities with whom they are associated. The Book of Margery Kempe, however, off ers a unique example of the rhetorical deployment of feminine power authorized by visionary access that does not function in service of the church and, instead, is fully retained by the woman. I will argue that the persistence of interest in dream theories creates a rhetorical continuity over time among texts empowering English dreaming and visionary women, but that power functions differently in the case of Margery Kempe when compared to her visionary predecessors.

Keywords: St Hild, Whitby, Margery Kempe, St Leoba, Christina of Markyate, visions, prophetic dreams, female spirituality, anti-feminism discourse, my.