Everyman & Margery Kempe

Everyman

-Easier allegory to interpret

-A morality play

-A particular type of medieval drama

morality plays evolved from religious roots:

• Originally performed as part of religious services during Christian festivals
• Later performed on portable outdoor stages in fields during festivals with the characters played by amateurs
• Medieval trade guilds (trade unions) in towns and villages had licenses to perform specific plays

Morality plays
allegorically present the right way to live

Most morality plays have three parts

Main character's...

• life of sin
• his fall
• his summons and accounting by Death

Everyman's structure

-unique in that it concentrates on the summons and accounting only

Other types of religious drama included:
miracle & mystery plays

Miracle plays focused on the lives of saints

Mystery plays concentrated on the events of Christ's life

Commonly performed in cycles of several plays over the days or weeks of a religious festival

Text of Everyman was written down in its present form after 1485

Probably an English translation of an older Flemish play

But the Flemish version was probably itself a translation of an English original

Margery Kempe:

Book of Margery Kempe is often called the first autobiography in English

Kempe herself was a well-to-do, upper-middle-class housewife born around 1373 whose father was a five-time mayor of the town of King's Lynn

Besides giving birth to fourteen children, she was also a businesswoman

After the birth of her last child, she had a series of visionary experiences that led her to a unique way of life

She lived chastely with her husband and pursued pilgrimages to many of the most important religious destinations of Europe and the Middle East

Her visions and her "gift of tears," as well as her assertive personality, made her a controversial figure

Margery saw herself as a holy woman and saw her practice of pilgrimage as an act of religious devotion and merit

Around the time of Chaucer, pilgrimage had become something different from its original intent

Kind of journey had begun as a simple kind of religious practice during the late Roman Empire

With the beginning of the Crusades in the 11th century,
-pilgrimage had been linked with pardon

Avoidance of temporal punishment for sin by an act of devotion

Crusaders had been offered pardon as an incentive for their armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land

Journeys of later pilgrims to holy sites were thought to earn them pardon as well as physical healing

With pardon waiting at the end, the journey of pilgrimage had become something more like modern tourism, in which people traveled for enjoyment and curiosity

Many of Margery Kempe's difficulties with her fellow pilgrims came from her disapproval of their lack of devotion to the spiritual goals of the pilgrimage journey

Though some of Margery's public spiritual practices seem outlandish to a modern audience

not the first to practice them...

• having the gift of tears (crying to move God to mercy toward others)
• seeing visions
• wearing the white of a virgin
• living chastely while married

Margery chose to act out these practices in public

Though she occasionally aroused resistance from church authorities

-church usually supported her actions when others complained

Margery's book was unique in one other way

She was illiterate and dictated her memoirs to at least two scribes over the course of her life

Excerpts from her narrative were published in early books printed by Wynkyn de Word, who called her a holy woman

Her full narrative was not discovered until 1934

Not clear what kind of book Margery thought she was dictating

Modern readers see it as a fascinating and realistic portrait of a strong, and perhaps unbalanced, female personality

Conclusion

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" represent two kinds of medieval English narrative poetry

Chaucer's poem is unique and cements his place among the greatest of English authors

Poetic romance of Sir Gawain places it as part of a tradition that actually originated in France, but which the English adapted

Going beyond the artistic reach of narrative poetry, there is also a great deal of diverse work which arose outside of the genre of narrative poetry

Poetry explored, as well as the prose, stakes a claim for artistic importance, especially for such women's writing as The Book of Margery Kempe