SOURCE: “From Utterance to Text: Authorizing the Mystical Word,” in Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, pp. 97-134.

In the essay that follows, Lochrie asserts that medieval mystical texts, such as The Book of Margery Kempe, strive to “authorize the oral text within their written text.” Lochrie examines the way Kempe attempts to legitimize her oral text in The Book of Margery Kempe, and argues that this task is particularly difficult for Kempe due to her illiteracy.

This book is not written in order, everything after the other just as it was done, but as the matter came to this creature's mind when it was written down, for it was so long before it was written that she had forgotten the time and the order in which things befell.

The Book of Margery Kempe

And with the same traversing, dispersing gesture …, she breaks...