Memoirs of a medieval woman

Description:

From back cover: This unique biography tells the story of an extraordinary fifteenth-century woman who journeyed all over Europe from England to the Holy Land. A vigorous and passionate woman, Margery Kempe was married and had fourteen children when she deserted her family to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to expiate a "secret sin" in her early life. Along the way she meets many famous prelates and dignitaries, gets into all sorts of scrapes, and survives a feverish voyage in the stinking galleys of a Venetian boat. Drawing on the chronicles of her contemporaries and on her own clear-eyed autobiography -- dictated to a priest near the end of her life and said to be the first written in English -- these memoirs reveal a woman who has strange ideas about such things as sin and sainthood, dress, diet, and sex, and provides a colorful and detailed picture of everyday medieval life in England and around the rim of the Mediterranean. Part-time historian Louise Collis brings a novelist's flair to this fascinating, well-researched story.

subjects: History,  Authors, English,  Biography,  Christian literature, English (Middle),  History and criticism,  Women and literature,  Mysticism,  Women,  English Authors,  Kempe, Margery,  Women, history

People: Margery Kempe (b. ca. 1373),  Margery Kempe

Places: England

Times: Middle English, 1100-1500,  To 1500,  Middle Ages, 500-1500,  Middle Ages, 600-1500