Wulp, The Saintliness of Margery Kempe

The Saintliness of Margery Kempe, by John Wulp

Reviewed by Kevin J. Harty harty@lasalle.edu

To paraphrase a question once posed by Virginia Woolf, what if Geoffrey Chaucer had had a sister?  Would she have been like Margery Kempe?  While their lives partially overlapped, Chaucer was dead by the time Margery undertook the more extraordinary parts of her life.  Her father, John Burnham, was mayor of Bishop’s Lynn and a Member of Parliament, and conceivably could have crossed paths with Chaucer.  Her husband too was the town mayor, and Margery appears to have been destined to lead an unremarkable but comfortable bourgeois life.  But she gave birth to fourteen children, proved a failure as a brewer, negotiated a celibate separation from her husband, went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Rome, and she was also “in Galice at Seint-Jame, and at Coloigne” like the Wife of Bath, a Chaucerian character with whom she shared a number of traits, including an early fondness for ostentatious styles of dress.  At first, Margery travelled on her own relying upon the kindness of strangers, but she seems to have undertaken her later travels in the company of her son, who may have been the first to transcribe parts of what we today call The Book of Margery Kempe.

 

Illiterate, Margery nonetheless knew of the writings of St. Bridget of Sweden, who was canonized during Margery’s lifetime—Wulp’s play has her actually in Rome during Bridget’s 1391 canonization ceremony—and consulted with Julian of Norwich, several years before the latter died: Julian assured Margery of the truth of her visions.  At one point, Margery returned home to nurse her husband through his last illness.  Her constant public weeping—out of spiritual joy—her unorthodox lifestyle—she often wore white in public against the prohibitions of the Church—and her tendency to preach in public brought her to the attention of the local clergy any number of times.  She was accused of heresy—specifically of being a Lollard—but she was in each case exonerated of all charges.

While Margery and Julian have today belatedly earned a place in the literary and religious canons as mystics, John Wulp wrote his play and had it first produced in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1958.  In the following year, a much revised version of the play opened off Broadway in New York with Frances Sternhagen as Margery, Gene Hackman as her long-suffering husband, and Charles Nelson Reilly in the supporting cast.  Hope Emily Allen only discovered the sole surviving manuscript of Margery’s book in 1934, and her edition for the Early English Text Society did not appear until 1940.  John Wulp is, therefore, a true pioneer in Kempe studies. The current New York revival, directed by Austin Pendleton, uses the original 1958 script.  As Wulp notes in the program for this production, the play “tells the story of a woman who did not want her life to be defined either by men or by the strictures of her society.  The gap between her ambitions and her ability embodies the entire human condition.”

The production uses no scenery and limited props as it traces Margery’s early determination to be something more than simply a wife and a mother, the male-prescribed virtuous options available to her.  She decides that she will abandon husband and children—the script gives her but six children—and become a brewer, but her talents are less than suited to brewing, and her one chance at success in the trade stems from the distinction that she represents in being a female brewer.  Men will flock to her to ogle at her as a novelty.  Rather than determining her own destiny, she will simply become a victim of the medieval male gaze.  Margery then decides that she will join forces with the devil, and lead a life of sin.  But the devil she encounters only offers her yet another male-prescribed role, whore.  Never one to accept adversity or a setback, Margery sets out instead to become a saint, but the male-dominated church demands a miracle as proof of her sanctity.  Happily, one occurs soon enough in a somewhat unorthodox (very Margery) way when the roof of a chapel collapses on her, and she escapes with only a few scraps and scratches.  Convinced of her own saintliness, and reluctantly blessed by the ecclesiastical authorities, Margery joins a ragtag group of pilgrims as they set out for the Holy Land and then return by way of Rome.  Margery is not an easy travelling companion, but she manages to scrape by, and eventually returns to her husband and children to secure a roof over her head as she begins to dictate the book that would eventually bear her name. 

That book’s significance lies in its being the first autobiography composed in English by a woman.  But Margery would, thanks in part to the Reformation, disappear from both the literary and the theological landscape for centuries.  And while Margery now has a more secure place in the canon, she still suffers from a male-prescribed ecclesiastical prejudice.  Julian of Norwich, the anchorite who abandoned the world and embraced contemplative celibacy, is today venerated as an official saint by both the Anglican and the Evangelical Lutheran communions, and as a popular saint by Roman Catholics.  Worldly Margery, the not quite totally rehabilitated fallen woman, has achieved no such recognition.  Holy recognition and sexism still seem to go hand in hand. A male saint like Augustine could allegedly pray “Lord, make me pure, but not quite yet.”  Women still seem to have fewer options, and less readily receive forgiveness and absolution.

Andrus Nichols as Margery Kempe

           

Andrus Nichols makes a wonderful Margery—lively, self-assured, yet difficult to put up with—the real Margery’s bouts of prolonged public weeping were met with decidedly mixed reactions by those who endured them.  The other members of the cast double and triple up on roles, and do so admirably.  Pendleton’s direction is steady.  John Wulp has had a distinguished career as a producer, scenic designer, director and artist since writing his Margery play, which won him a Rockefeller Grant.  He subsequently would earn an Obie Award, a Tony, a Drama Desk Award, and an Outer Circle Critics Award, among other recognitions for his later work in the theater.  This revival of The Saintliness of Margery Kempe is part of a wave of theatrical medievalism in New York.  This past Spring saw a Broadway production of Shaw’s Saint Joan, and the Fall will bring a production of Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid, with Glenn Close as Joan’s Mother, further downtown at the Public Theater.  That play has been advertised as the “tale of Joan of Arc, as seen through the eyes of her mum who is doing her very best to accept the fact that her daughter is different.”

The Saintliness of Margery Kempe by John Wulp at The Duke Theater on 42^nd Street in New York, produced by the Perry Street Theatre Company and Jonathan Demar in association with Frederick M. Zollo and Diane Procter. Directed by Austin Pendleton.  Featuring Vance Barton, Latonya Borsay, Timothy Doyle, Michael Genet, Ginger Grace, Andrus Nichols, Jason O’Connell, Pippa Peartree, and Thomas Sommo.  July 5-August 26, 2018.

Kevin J. Harty, La Salle University

Huckvale: A Green and Pagan Land

David Huckvale, A Green and Pagan Land: Myth, Magic and Landscape in British Film and Television. Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2018.

Reviewed by Carolyne Larrington (carolyne.larrington@sjc.ox.ac.uk)

Written by an author who has worked as a BBC radio presenter, script writer and researcher, this book is an unusual contribution to medievalism studies. Its stated aim is ‘to explore the British literature of pagan fantasy that foreshadowed so many celebrated British films’ and it offers a brisk filmography in the preface: oddly missing David Rudkin’s evocative made-for-TV Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1991). The book does, in part, discuss the films listed here, with a particularly interesting final chapter on David Rudkin / Alan Clarke’s Penda’s Fen (1974), but it also ranges widely (indeed rather randomly) across a number of topics relating to pagan fantasy, landscape, and much else besides. The introduction, entitled ‘Into the Woods’ offers up some inconsequential examples of tree-lore and surveys some writers who have depicted woods and forests as sinister. Algernon Blackwood and J. R. R. Tolkien are invoked, and there is a quick overview of the history of mythic landscape from the nineteenth century onwards, culminating in a fogeyish lament for the ‘commercialization and kitschification of … folk traditions’. Chapter one rehearses the well-worn topos of the history of King Arthur. The author relies on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century retellings and summaries for his information; indeed, and problematically in places, source criticism is not a strong point of his approach. Thus, that Chaucer believed there was a ‘pagan aspect’ to Arthur is adduced from the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ (cited directly from Keightley’s Fairy Mythology and without any consideration of Chaucer’s larger purposes in the Tale). Elsewhere in the chapter we learn that the pagan magic and landscape in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King ‘formed the basis of the Celtic revival – and that this turned increasingly away from Christianity’ (though a more historically nuanced account of nineteenth-century Celticism is given in a later chapter). Huckvale takes the Victorian idea of the pagan at face value, and does not ask how far this was either invented or romanticised. Of more interest here is a side-by-side reading of Tennyson’s Idylls and Wagner’s Ring. It is clear that Huckvale knows a great deal about music, and when he expands on Wagner and on British composers (in particular little-known figures such as Rutland Boughton and Granville Bantock) his writing is convincing and informative – even if the relationship of the music either to landscape or to British film and TV is often tangential at best. Eventually the chapter reaches Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Excalibur; here the discussion of landscape becomes a little more central.

The second chapter focuses on the Grail, and the topic of landscape of the Grail quest is better handled; the idea that ‘we are all Grails’ (p. 55) leads into a broadly Jungian reading of myth, though the question ‘what is myth if not a cliché?’ could have been broached with more nuance. Other broadly Grail-related medievalist works: Powys’ A Glastonbury Romance, or more loosely, Ken Russell’s The Lair of the White Worm, bits of Parsifal, Lindsay Clarke’s The Chymical Wedding and Garner’s The Owl Service are marshalled here. Later chapters examine the Green Man, Tristan and Isolde (with a slew of lesser-known works by British composers and poets under the influence of Wagner), the Celtic Twilight (with some lively discussion of The Wicker Man), Pan, Arcadia, The Golden Bough, witchcraft and, finally, Penda’s Fen. Much is shoehorned in here that has little to do with film, tv, fantasy or landscape particularly and connections often seem tenuous. So the Celtic Twilight chapter’s discussion of Yeats notes that a line of Cuchullain’s sounds rather like the formula by which Kullervo announces himself in the Kalevala (and in Sibelius’s Kullervo symphony); in fact it is a standard poetic formula by which a hero designates himself as being his father’s son. Huckvale does not suggest that Yeats might have read the Kalevala or have heard the symphony, but offers the relationship between Yeats’s faery- and myth-inspired writing and Arnold Bax as a comparison to Sibelius’s response to the Kalevala; he certainly does not consider the role of patronymics, heroic identity, poetic formulas in oral tradition or any of the other aspects of the shared connection that might appear salient. At the end of this chapter, a discussion about The Wicker Man, location-hunting as a way of tapping into the ambience and underlying creepiness of well-made horror films meshes well with thinking about psychogeography.

The chapter on Pan works rather better than some others, drawing a clear line from the Decadents’ re-discovery of Pan, via Arthur Machen, and Lord Dunsany to the films based on Dennis Wheatley’s novels. The Arcadia chapter is more loosely structured, yoking together retellings of classical myth and history in such diverse figures as Mary Renault and Walter Pater, along with the composers Granville Bantock and Gerald Finzi, culminating in Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981). Harryhausen’s debt to Victorian painters for his vision, nuggets of film-location lore and earlier and later filmed versions of Greek myth are compared. The Golden Bough chapter returns to The Wicker Man once again, while the penultimate chapter on witches at last engages with some of the best-known folk-horror films and TV programmes of the Seventies and beyond.

A Green and Pagan Land is a very mixed bag. It is the work of an enthusiastic amateur who knows a good deal about British composers and TV and film fantasy, and who has read quite widely in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fantasy fiction. It lacks any kind of theoretical orientation – apart from a quick dip of the toe into Jungian waters – and the author has clearly not read any other secondary literature about medievalism or British folk-tradition. If he had, he would perhaps have escaped some of the book’s many errors: among them: references to the Irish folk-epic ‘The Book of the Dun Cow’; ‘Mercia’ as the Roman name for a part of England; confusion of the Victorian Mary Anne Atwood and the considerably better-know Margaret Atwood; locating Donegal in Scotland; ‘hoards’ and ‘hordes’, and so on. Nor is the book particularly up to date; the section on London fantasy focusing on Peter Pan and Kensington Gardens might have opened up discussion of China Miéville and Ben Aaronovitch, but apart from a couple of recent films (often remakes), the material is mostly last century. Where the author follows his enthusiasms and has thoroughly researched and thought about his material, he does have some illuminating things to say, but, disappointingly, these do not particularly address the topics invoked in the book’s title.        

Carolyne Larrington

St John's College, Oxford

6th Biennial Chaucer Celebration, Arizona State University, March 23, 2018

6th Biennial Chaucer Celebration, Arizona State University, March 23, 2018

Reviewed by Chad Crosson (ccrosson@berkeley.edu)

Organized and led by one of Arizona State University’s own Chaucerians, Professor Richard Newhauser, the 2018 6th Biennial ASU Chaucer Celebration emphasized the important and necessary work of introducing a younger generation not only to the works of Chaucer, but to the humanities more generally. I need not belabor how critical it is at this moment to cultivate an appreciation and understanding of what the humanities offer to a younger generation and to our communities at large. The ever-shrinking job market and English departments have been points of anxiety for some time now. Therefore, I was delighted to see the auditorium mostly filled, not just with academics like myself, but a host of fresh-faced high school students from the local communities - Newhauser had extended the invitation to this year’s Chaucer Celebration to local public high schools so that students with a developing interest in Chaucer and the humanities might attend.

The morning thus began appropriately with a reading by YA novelist Kim Zarins, who, with smiles and encouragement, acknowledged these young students at the opening of her reading. Zarins’ book, Sometimes We Tell the Truth, offers a 21st-century retelling of the Canterbury Tales, which takes place (appropriately for that morning’s younger audience) on a school bus during a field trip to Washington D. C.; and the chapter Zarins selected to read revealed to me the knowledge and interest she must have in her young readers. Indeed, if nothing else revealed the extent to which Zarins understood her audience, the fact that she transformed the Franklin’s Tale into a rendition of Harry Potter fanfiction - narrated by a young student pilgrim - did. I smiled, listening to her excerpt, remembering fellow writers from my own undergraduate years and the attention they gave to the reading and writing of Harry Potter fanfiction. And those familiar with that genre and the Franklin’s Tale would have been pleased by Zarins’ choice to make potions instructor Severus Snape the “tregetour” (illusionist) who agrees to help a young Aurelius win his love through deception. Of course, this portrayal would not be complete without Snape’s sneering words of warning that winning love in such a way does not typically work as planned. Consequently, Zarins’ version of the tale reached its audience with a thoughtful mixture of serious and morally complex teen romance, along with a subtle and quirky humor that never allowed one to take the drama too seriously. In short, she recreated for her audience how many might imagine that Chaucer himself entertains - with concerns of human and moral significance, all while not losing sight of the offbeat enjoyment this art might afford.

The second and final presenter was Patience Agbabi, who has received wide recognition as a former Poet Laureate of Canterbury, and who read from her latest book, Telling Tales, a poetic reimagining of Chaucer’s poems and characters through the lens of contemporary genres. Agbabi wasted no time hooking the attention of her audience by opening with no less of a gregarious character than Harry Bailey himself - master of ceremonies - transforming his bravado into her own masterful performance of London grime (a musical genre influenced by hip hop, and composed in the parlance of contemporary East London), in rhythm-filled, rhyming couplets, which I would like to imagine that Chaucer himself would have particularly enjoyed.

From beginning to the end of her readings, Agbabi had the enormous talent and ability to keep everyone in keen anticipation of her next poem. In fact, I do not believe that I have observed seen high school students so taken with a poetry reading. To see them (perhaps unexpectedly) moved and inspired by poetry was its own treat. But just as great of a treat was to witness the range of Agbabi’s poetic retellings of Chaucer’s Tales, retellings which spanned the world of rap / hip hop / grime, 1960s Soul, elegy / monody, and dramatic monologue (to name a handful); her book thus presents its own modern miscellany of popular genres.

I would also like to take a moment to appreciate the way Agbabi handled material from what may be considered Chaucer’s darker work, namely, the Prioress’s Tale - subject matter that many would not have blamed her for leaving out. However, Agbabi took a tale of anti-semitism - with the murder of a Christian schoolboy in a Jewish ghetto - and created a darkly moving poem based on true events, in which a young, black Londoner, murdered on the streets near his home, speaks through her poem. Silence permeated the auditorium as we listened to the voice of a dead youth offering a last appeal of love and farewell to his mother. Such a poem, of course, is timely for a young American audience beset by gun violence, and it became all the more apparent the way in which the “medieval” can be an excellent tool to explore contemporary socio-political issues. Yet Agbabi did not allow her audience to remain in one emotional or intellectual space for long, as she soon transitioned to both a humorous and meditative portrayal of the Wife of Bath, placing her in Nigeria, the prior home of Agbabi’s own parents. It was refreshing to hear the Wife live again and loom large in an entirely new cultural context, and speaking for a new female experience. Indeed, this retelling reminded me how important it is that we continue hearing from the Wife of Bath, especially as another generation of feminists struggles to be heard.

All this brings me to a larger consideration of the value of medieval studies and medievalism to a contemporary culture now more than ever in need of self-reflection. Without making it explicit, the readings that morning explored the potential of medievalism to capture imaginations and thereby potentially capture support for both medieval studies and the humanities; retelling Chaucer allows one to touch directly on contemporary issues through narrative rather than critical essays, thereby reaching a more diverse audience. As Carolyn Dinshaw has so insightfully argued, the idea of multiple temporalities co-existing allows for one to provide commentary (or social critique) on the other - as we may also recognize how the “medieval” has perennially created such opportunities: whether in thinking about torture (e.g., “getting medieval”) or in creating fantasy (e.g., Tolkien-based films) that showcases a fictionalized medieval world that distances the present (real) life, even as it still reflects that life. Interpreting the present through the past and the past through the present is one hallmark of medieval writing, as Dinshaw astutely observes regarding Sir John Mandeville, who “for the most part...interprets the others that he encounters in his eastward travels as versions of himself and his own culture,” creating an “asynchronous now.”[1] Likewise, today’s recreated “medieval” (exemplified by these readings) provides the fictional occasion to think about current events or to offer apparent modes of escapism that never really escape the present. Put another way, these readings suggested how the medieval has become not just a recreated past but an alternative space, one which has the capacity to defamiliarize the contemporary culture and philosophy introduced to that space. The question that naturally arises is, by defamiliarizing (or perhaps re-familiarizing) the present through the past, might we be better able to reflect on our current times?

Such ideas of multiple temporalities and an “asynchronous now” were difficult to miss at this gathering of ASU’s Biennial Chaucer Celebration. Indeed, what better demonstration of how temporalities meet than by witnessing two contemporary authors render Chaucer for an audience composed largely of high school students, who are themselves potentially fans of Game of Thrones and Harry Potter, and all the conceptions and misconceptions those works present of medieval temporality. Zarins and Agbabi memorably revealed the many ways in which these temporalities might crossover: whether through contemporary fanfiction, based on both Chaucer and the fictionalized “medieval” of Harry Potter, and spoken by youthful narrators; or through various geographical spaces and musical genres that reinvigorate the Canterbury pilgrims through contemporary and multicultural voices. In all, Newhauser, Zarins, and Agbabi are to be commended on multiple fronts, not only for introducing Chaucer’s work to a new generation and cultural context, but also for demonstrating so immediately how Chaucer (and the “medieval”) still speaks to the social, political, post-colonial, and racial experiences of our times. Regardless of the academic interests we may have in fictional reimaginings and youthful retellings of the Tales, or representations of Harry Bailey as a suave hip hop artist with a charming swagger, I left these readings satisfied at observing a younger generation taken in by the vivacious and edifying spirit of Chaucer’s tales and poetry - and isn’t that really a good thing for everyone?

---

[1] Dinshaw, “All Kinds of Time,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer (2013), 3-25, at 10.