What We Know About Margery Kempe Essay

Antigone and A Raisin in the Sun are two pieces of literature that are similar in one way, yet very different in another way. Both are very interesting pieces that were written to captivate even the most critical of audiences. This paper will show similarities as well as differences between the two pieces and their authors.

Throughout history, there have been a select number of women with extraordinary talent, intelligence, and passion that have challenged and defied society's subjugation of women and have stood their ground under the pressure of patriarchy. The Middle Ages, in particular, generally cast women in a negative light. Some medieval women used their abilities in the arts to leave a lasting impression on a society that affiliated women with Eve, who was believed to be the reason for man's fall from grace. Others had a religious perspective, immersing themselves in God's work on earth. One such woman was Margery Kempe, a fifteenth-century visionary who was widely criticized as being a heretic and worshipper of

Her father James, who was a successful businessman who had acquired considerable real estate and was a practising catholic and man of deep faith passed away when she was very young. However his strong faith servilely impacted her. His inspiring example lead Catherine to persist being a Catholic her entire life. Which meant going against all the pressures and resisting or the criticism. Catherine 's mother lacked her husbands depth of faith and was much more interested in her social status within Dublin society than her religion. It was her father who provided her with the first model of service to the poor through his involvement with those in his own community. The second death of her parent forced into becoming independant, and growing up much quicker then she would have hoped. However again this has shaped the way Catherine was, and built her strong and caring character. Looking for god in this instance help Catherine gain strength to carry on to inspire and help others along the way. “Do not put your trust in any human being, but place all your confidence in God.”(Catherine McAuley 49). Catherine was influence by religion from a very young age, which has shown significantly throughout her life. Her fathers presence in her life at a young age was still so impactful that she carried out his religion and pushed through all other temptations to convert.

The context of the plot found in “The School” presents the readers with the timeless question of the meaning of life. However, this question does not seem to present itself immediately to the reader. In order to appreciate Barthelme’s work in this piece, it is crucial that one utilizes the New Criticism’s approach to reading. New Criticism was first developed in the 20th century and it makes reading and interpreting literature a systematic activity. New Criticism as an analytical tool helps the readers to understand and gain insight into all forms of the written works through sheer understanding and by reading closely. This means that our focus

When learning of witchcraft in the seventeenth century, it is important to understand the faith at the time. Knowing the what the people, at the time,

During the pre-revolutionary period, more and more men worked outside the home in workshops, factories or offices. Many women stayed at home and performed domestic labor. The emerging values of nineteenth-century America, which involves the eighteenth-century, increasingly placed great emphasis upon a man's ability to earn enough wages or salary to make his wife's labor unnecessary, but this devaluation of women's labor left women searching for a new understanding of themselves. Judith Sargent Murray, who was among America's earliest writers of female equality, education, and economic independence, strongly advocated equal opportunities for women. She wrote many essays in order to empower young women in the new republic to stand up against

Elisabeth Lesuer was a very faithful, and intelligent woman in the late 19th century early 20th century. Being brought up in the upper-middle class, she was able to be educated privately in languages, arts, and literature. She has also studied much of the Catholic Faith. She meets the love of her life Felix Lesuer in 1886 while he was attending the University of Paris. The two married in 1889. While going to the university, Felix quits Catholicism, but the two had an agreement that Elisabeth can remain faithful, but Felix did not practice in the faith at all. Later in time, though, Felix started giving Elisabeth readings against Christianity weakening her participation in Christianity; One day this backfired on him when handing her Earnest Renan’s History of the Origins of Christianity, the first volume of which, The Life of Jesus, denies Christ’s Divinity. After reading this, Elisabeth does research on this matter, and experiences deep adult conversion, and returns passionately practicing the Faith,which she saw as the truth. Begins writing her spiritual journal in 1899 called Journal et pensées de chaque jour. The journal just showed how committed she was to that faith, even though her social society was against it, and how she would get by being faithful, without making Felix mad, and anyone else against the Faith she knew in her life. Elisabeth’s journal explained why she was so faithful, and how she would study, and pray the Faith in ways that didn’t upset those

What was the predominant image of women and women’s place in medieval society? Actual historical events, such as the scandal and subsequent litigation revolving around Anna Buschler which Steven Ozment detail’s in the Burgermeisters Daughter, suggests something off a compromise between these two literary extremes. It is easy to say that life in the sixteenth century was surely no utopia for women but at least they had some rights.

What Bynum demonstrates is that late medieval piety had become heavily idiosyncratic: the emphasis of spirituality was increasingly placed on the primacy of experience: on seeing, meeting, and most importantly for women, on eating and tasting God. Section II lays out ‘The Evidence’ supporting Bynum’s theory that fasting and food related symbolism played such a central role to women’s spirituality that it ultimately became a literary trope in the vitae of female saints and mystics. From the very outset of the chapter, the author proves her argument from a purely quantitative analysis of 864 saints from 1000-1700: although only 17.5% of those canonized as saints were women, women accounted for almost 29% of saints who practiced rigorous austerities which include extreme fasting. The lives of these women and their relationship with food are then laid out in detail. Hunger, thirst, desire, nourishment and satiety developed into quintessential symbols describing women’s relationships to God. Finally, in order to demonstrate comparatively how the role of Eucharistic devotion and extreme fasting was not nearly as prominent a theme among men as it was with women, Bynum also explores the presence (or lack thereof) of food-related motifs in the vitae of male saints.

Feminism, is a term that is widely misunderstood; some consider feminists as man haters, while others consider feminism as just another way for a woman to complain. Ultimately, feminism is a term that strives for equality for all. Margery Kempe, in The Book Of Margery Kempe, at first glance seems to be overly dramatic and manipulative as a way to garnish the public’s attention but is there more than meets the eye when it comes to Margery Kempe? I will argue that, Margery Kempe, in, The Book Of Margery Kempe, Book One, is in fact a feminist who uses her faith as a way to fight against ownership and inertness thus gaining independence and freedom from the patriarchal society.

The Wife of Bath's crusade to prove the worth of women does open the prologue to modern interpretations that reconfigure the Wife of Bath as a feminist

Dorothy L. Sayers was a very distinguished British Christian scholarly of the twentieth era. She was a revolutionary gumshoe writer and clandestine logician, a path-breaking author, a zesty interpreter of and commentator on Dante, an insightful defender, an under appreciated poet, and a derisive mythical and societal critic, she Sayers mysticism lies inside the lucid custom of catholic sacramental mysticism and usual law morals.

Most times women were not taught how to read and write so the fact that Gliki took inspiration from her childhood and her father’s teachings she was able to become the woman that she was. Reading about this in our book made my view on the subject widen more than ever before, rather than just looking at one gender and how that one gender affected the seventeenth century. Women in the Jewish religion were able to do more than women who practiced other religions. One example, Catholic women could not do many things like for example, “Although every convent had to have a priest available to say Mass and hear confessions because the Catholic Church ruled these were functions that no woman could perform, all of the other administrative duties and much of the spiritual counseling of novices and residents were carried out by women” (209

Thus, we see that in a sense, Catholicism acted as a catalyst in the development of female education. Paradoxically enough though, at the same time, it limited the possible level of knowledge they could attain. The thought of the supposedly foolish, sinful female sex breaking the bonds of ignorance made many people fear the possibility of women reading “forbidden” books. Dante’s “La vita nuova”, the Petrarchan sonnets and the “Decameron” are a few examples of books that were considered lasciviously dangerous and kept off-limits (Grendler, 1989). Indeed, women could be educated, yet within a certain framework. Their level of knowledge only went up to a point, in order to make sure they grew up to be exemplary, pious, Christian housewives.

Religion in the Middle Ages takes on a character all of its own as it is lived out differently in the lives of medieval men and women spanning from ordinary laity to vehement devotees. Though it is difficult to identify what the average faith consists of in the Middle Ages, the life told of a radical devotee in The Book of Margery Kempe provides insight to the highly intense version of medieval paths of approaching Christ. Another medieval religious text, The Cloud of Unknowing, provides a record of approaching the same Christ. I will explore the consistencies and inconsistencies of both ways to approach Christ and religious fulfillment during the Middle Ages combined with the motivations to do so on the basis of both texts.