Margery Kempe (Glück novel)

Margery Kempe is a 1994 novel by New Narrative founding member Robert Glück. It is a retelling of Margery Kempe's purported writing, The Book of Margery Kempe, through a narrator named Bob who is in love with a man named L. It was republished in 2020 by New York Review Books.[1]

Background and publication

Margery Kempe was a mystic in the 1400s who is purported to have written an autobiography entitled The Book of Margery Kempe.[2] It is sometimes referred to as the first autobiography written in the English language.[2]

Robert Glück published Margery Kempe in 1994 with High Risk Books.[3] It is a work in the New Narrative movement, a collection of experimental writing with queer themes and authors.[4] It is a retelling of The Book of Margery Kempe based on Barry Windeatt's 1985 translation of the text.[5] It centers on its 40-year-old narrator,[6] Bob, who discusses his love of a man named L. in Kempe's style;[7] in some cases, Glück directly quotes from Kempe's writing, though the story itself is set in the twentieth century.[8] Like The Book of Margery Kempe, Glück's novel is mostly focused on the interior life of Bob and the struggles of naming emotions through language.[9]

Reissue

In 2020, New York Review Books reissued the novel;[10] it included a foreword by Colm Tóibín and an afterword by Glück.[3]

References

Citations

  1. ^ "Sex and the Sacristy". www.bookforum.com. Retrieved 2023-07-21.
  2. ^ a b Tremblay-McGaw 2022, p. 18.
  3. ^ a b Burger 2021, p. 387.
  4. ^ Tremblay-McGaw 2022, pp. 18, 26.
  5. ^ Bartlett 2004, p. 438.
  6. ^ Tremblay-McGaw 2022, p. 17.
  7. ^ Bartlett 2004, p. 440.
  8. ^ Burger 2021, p. 388.
  9. ^ Bartlett 2004, pp. 441, 450; Burger 2021, p. 390.
  10. ^ "Los Angeles Review of Books". Los Angeles Review of Books. 2020-08-06. Retrieved 2023-07-21.

Works cited