Re-Reading Margery Kempe in the 21st Century

The Book of Margery Kempe is the autobiography of an English Christian mystic of the late medieval period. This critical examination provides a comparative analysis of contemporary studies of the work and expands on themes of gender, sexuality and authorship that are central to the study of what is regarded as a seminal English language biographical text. Castagna is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Palermo, Italy. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Valentina Castagna is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Palermo. She was Visiting PhD Student at Birkbeck College, London, in 2005 and was awarded her PhD in 2007 (University of Salerno). Among her books are Shape-Shifting Tales: Michele Roberts’s Monstrous Women (2010), Corpi a pezzi (2007) and the Italian critical edition of Marina Warner’s Brigit’s Cell (2010). She has published articles in national and international journals.