A01=Laura Kalas
Author_Laura Kalas
Book
Category=DSBB
Category=MBX
Category=QRM
Category=QRVK2
Christ the Physician
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Female Flesh
feminist
Feminist Project
interdisciplinary study
Interpretation
Life-Course
Margery Kempe
maternal theology
medical discourse
medical humanities
medieval
Medieval Culture
Medieval Medical Discourse
Melancholic Activities
Middle Ages
Mystical Body
mysticism
ontology
Pain
Reading
Sickness
Spiritual Medicine
spirituality
Suffering
Transformation
Product details
- ISBN 9781843846840
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 09 May 2023
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The Book of Margery Kempe set in the context of medieval medical discourse.
Margery Kempe's various illnesses, mental, spiritual and physical, are a recurring theme in her Book. This volume, the first full-length interdisciplinary study from a medical humanities perspective, offers a medicalized reading of Kempe's spirituality in the context of the ubiquitous medieval notion of Christ the Physician, and thus a new way of interpreting the Book itself: as a narrative of Kempe's own engagement with the medical paradigms of which she has previously been a passive subject.
Focusing on the interactions of medicine, mysticism and reproduction as a feminist project, the author explores the ontology of female flesh; the productive use of pain, suffering and sickness; and the ethics of a maternal theology based on the melancholic and surrogate activities that underlie Kempe's experience. Structured broadly via a traverse through the life course, the book shows how Kempe's response to suffering is illuminated by the medieval medical discourse by which she is contemporaneously read, and by which she engineers her own construction and understanding of self. It also explores Kempe's persistent attendance to her mystical body and refusal to compromise her instinct to authentically show how she feels.
LAURA KALAS is Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Swansea University.
