Laura Kalas

Margery Kempe's Spiritual Medicine (eBook, PDF)

Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

The Book of Margery Kempe set in the context of medieval medical discourse.

Margery Kempe's various illnesses, mental, spiritual and physical, are a recurring theme in her Book. This volume, the first full-length interdisciplinary study from a medical humanities perspective, offers a medicalized reading of Kempe's spirituality in the context of the ubiquitous medieval notion of Christ the Physician, and thus a new way of interpreting the Book itself: as a narrative of Kempe's own engagement with the medical paradigms of which she has previously been a passive subject.
Focusing on the interactions of medicine, mysticism and reproduction as a feminist project, the author explores the ontology of female flesh; the productive use of pain, suffering and sickness; and the ethics of a maternal theology based on the melancholic and surrogate activities that underlie Kempe's experience. Structured broadly via a traverse through the life course, the book shows how Kempe'sresponse to suffering is illuminated by the medieval medical discourse by which she is contemporaneously read, and by which she engineers her own construction and understanding of self. It also explores Kempe's persistent attendance to her mystical body and refusal to compromise her instinct to authentically show how she feels.

LAURA KALAS is a Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Swansea University.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wits University Press
• Seitenzahl: 253
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. März 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781787446878
• Artikelnr.: 63205303

Autorenporträt

LAURA KALAS is Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction 1. Bleeding the Tears of Melancholia 2. 'Þe mukke' of Marriage
and the Sexual Paradox 3. Lost Blood of the Middle Age: Surrogacy and
Fecundity 4. Margery Medica: The Healing Value of Pain Surrogacy 5. The
Passion of Death Surrogacy 6. Senescent Reproduction: Writing Anamnestic
Pain Afterword / Afterlife Select Bibliography Glossary of Medical Terms