Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Motherhood and Margery Kempe
- 2 The Motherhood Matrix in the Writing of Julian of Norwich
- 3 Discourses of Prostitution and The Book of Margery Kempe
- 4 ‘3yf thowe be payede,’ quod oure lorde, ‘I am payede’: Hermeneutics of the Holy Whore in Julian of Norwich
- 5 Margery Kempe: Wisdom, Authority and the Female Utterance
- 6 Julian of Norwich: Voice of the Wise Woman
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Motherhood and Margery Kempe
- 2 The Motherhood Matrix in the Writing of Julian of Norwich
- 3 Discourses of Prostitution and The Book of Margery Kempe
- 4 ‘3yf thowe be payede,’ quod oure lorde, ‘I am payede’: Hermeneutics of the Holy Whore in Julian of Norwich
- 5 Margery Kempe: Wisdom, Authority and the Female Utterance
- 6 Julian of Norwich: Voice of the Wise Woman
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
With fele frutys be we fayr fad,
Woundyr dowcet and neuyr on ill.
Every tre with frute is sprad,
Of them to take as plesyth us tyll.
In þis gardeyn I wyl go se
All þe flourys of fayr bewté
And tastyn þe frutys of gret plenté
Þat be in paradyse.
These words, attributed to Eve by the playwright of the N-Town play entitled The Creation of the World: The Fall of Man, serve to identify in her a restlessly transgressive desire to move out of her allocated space at the side of Adam and access the more marginal realms beyond. Instead of being compliant to her ontological role as Adam's helpmate and companion, the N-Town Eve displays a wanderlust which draws her away from Adam to enjoy the delights of the garden independently of her partner. In contrast, in the same play Adam is depicted as ‘a good gardenere’ and one who dutifully gathers the product of his labours with ‘gle and game’. It is such a flirtation with the veiled dangers of the unstructured marginal regions of her environment, brought about by an excessive appetite for consumption, which leads to Eve's seduction by the serpent and the resultant downfall of humankind and loss of Eden. In other popular medieval depictions of Eve too – such as that of the second play of the Chester Mystery Cycle – it is a similarly socially and morally transgressive Eve who brings about human downfall and effects permanent alienation from the paradisiac space allocated to Adam and herself by God.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2004