In both the Book of Margery Kempe and the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” in the Canterbury Tales, the female protagonists manipulate clerical discourse to challenge the male dominated institutional church and create new spaces for women in the late...

The Book of Margery Kempe is widely considered to be the first autobiography in the English language. Unlike previous texts, in which a presumably truthful narrator voiced the story of the characters, Kempe is the author of her own story. As...

Like visions of God, the study of the role and importance of the female body stands at the forefront of lots of text written by mystical medieval women. As we discussed in class, Julian of Norwich’s sick body allowed her to have visions of God,...

The act of self-presentation allows the writer to present a specific image of oneself, often with a clearly identifiable motivation often matching the expectations and preferences of the desired audience/readership; and thus to some extent...