This essay addresses intersections of gender and genre by exploring the complex ways in which the Book of Margery Kempe draws on other devotional texts, particularly those of Hilton and Rolle, on the lives of holy women, and on Kempe's own social and cultural contexts, in order to shape a unique type of life-writing. Attention is paid to the multi-modal sensory quality of Kempe's visionary expe…
Always rewriting and always rewritten, romance also opens onto new ways of seeing. Romance retains its power in part because, in its engagement with thinking, feeling, and being in the world, it continues to allow readers to re-vision themselves. Medieval depictions of the continuum of mind and body, the role of affect in cognition, and the physical effects of love, loss, and trauma can have po…