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“My Body Free to God”: Pilgrimage as a Technology of Self in the Book of Margery Kempe

Spiritus 15 (2015): 155–171 © 2015 by The Johns Hopkins University Press The Book of Margery Kempe is not simply the narrative of a pilgrim, but it is a textual pilgrimage: in it, the author retreads the way and the narrative itself. Her ability to read into her experiences the various medieval models for holiness is the final step of her progress towards Christ. The Book is clearly not hagiography or spiritual autobiography, nor does it securely establish Margery as an exemplar. Her persona in the Book may seem too bold to be saintly, too humble to be vain, and too theatrical to be madness. Yet if the Book itself is a performance, an enactment of a learned humility and detachment from self as well as a narrative about how they were learned, then Margery’s claims to speak for God are coherent with her extravagant boldness and her extravagant humility. In this essay I argue that the embodied techniques exemplified by late medieval pilgrimage provide the discipline by which Margery acquires but (more importantly) claims a public right to speak.