I always struggle a bit with medieval texts, but after being out of school for a year and a half, I found these texts way more difficult than I thought I would.
The Wife’s Lament was the text I felt I understood the best. Even though I didn’t completely understand what was going on I love that I can still feel the sadness of the narrator. I think it’s so interesting that we don’t know who wrote it, academics can’t agree what it’s about, but the emotion can still travel the distance of over a thousand years.
I had a much more difficult time with Revelations of Divine Love. I think this is partially because of the religiosity of the text (I was raised Catholic, but very rarely went to church), and just the fact that it is a Medieval text. I had to read through the chapters multiple times before I felt like I was able to get a grip on what she was saying.
The Book of Margery Kempe was a very interesting text to me. I liked that unlike the author of The Wife’s Lament we can put a name and a whole backstory to this woman. We know that it is autobiographical and actually written by a woman. We get to learn about life as she saw it and that is one of my favourite things about reading. The fact that we get a peek into the life of a woman who lived so long ago is amazing.
I hope that now that we are past the first few weeks of classes and into the swing of things I will be able to shake off my rust and write some more interesting posts about our future readings.
I agree about the intensity of the Wife’s Lament. And you are correct, it is even more powerful given that there is disagreement about the events described.
Julian of Norwich IS a difficult read. That’s why I went with excerpts rather than asking you to read the whole book!
Your points about Margery Kempe connect back to your earlier comments about Woolf. Under Woolf’s rubric, the very aspects of Kempe that we find interesting, would possibly disqualify her from being considered a successful writer, in Woolf’s terms.
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