Medieval Women and their Spiritual Texts: Helfta Writings, Margery Kempe, and Beyond

Essays in Honour of Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

Anne Mouron, Marleen Cré, Mami Kanno (eds)

Pages: approx. 315 p.
Size:156 x 234 mm
Illustrations:1 b/w, 5 col.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2026

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This volume combines new approaches on Margery Kempe and cutting-edge research on the thirteenth-century Helfta mystics, Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrude the Great, in a Festschrift to celebrate and honour the distinguished career of Professor Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa (Shizuoka University, Japan).

Subject(s)

BIO

Anne Mouron is a senior member of Regent’s Park College (Oxford University). She is interested in late religious medieval literature by and for women in Middle English, Middle French, and Latin.

Marleen Cré is lecturer in English Literature, Culture, and Language at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Saint-Louis Bruxelles. She is the author of Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse (Brepols, 2006) and has published on Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and Marguerite Porète.

Mami Kanno is Associate Professor of English at Kanazawa University, Japan. Her research focuses on Middle English saints’ legends and their manuscripts, with particular interest in representations of women.

Summary

This volume offers essays at the cutting edge of research to honour and reflect on the distinguished career of Professor Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa and her numerous publications on medieval religious women, notably the German nun Mechthild of Hackeborn (1241–1298), as well as the English mystic Margery Kempe (1373–1438) whose Boke she translated into Japanese with Mikiko Ishii.

If interest in Margery‘s text has long been established, the same is not true of Mechthild’s Liber specialis gratiae, especially in the English-speaking world. The new edition of its Middle English translation, The Boke of Gostely Grace: The Middle English Translation: A Critical Edition from Oxford, MS Bodley 220 by Yoshikawa and Mouron with the assistance of Atherton, and the accompanying volume, A Companion to the Boke of Gostely Grace: The Middle English Translation and its European Vernacular Contexts, have gone some length to redress the situation, and to acknowledge the importance of Mechthild of Hackeborn and her fellow nun, Gertrude the Great, in medieval European mysticism.

The present publication, written by both seasoned and early-career scholars, builds on these two volumes. It provides further insights into Mechthild　and Gertrude; it offers new approaches to Margery Kempe; and it considers their influence on later writers.

It is hoped that this Festschrift will inspire further interest and innovative research on works written and dictated by medieval women.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Some Reflections on Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa’s Scholarship and Contribution to the Field of Medieval Studies
DIANE WATT

Introduction
ANNE MOURON, MARLEEN CRÉ, AND MAMI KANNO

Part I. Helfta Writings

1. Sickness and Suffering in Texts Associated with Gertrude the Great of Helfta
ALEXANDRA BARRATT

2. ‘A sowne of preysyng and thankyng in þe syȝt of God’: Music in Mechthild of Hackeborn’s Boke of Gostely Grace
ANNE MOURON

3. The Fourth Woman of Liège: Lutgard in Fourteenth-Century England
CHRISTIANIA WHITEHEAD

4. The Appropriation of Mechthild of Hackeborn in Two Middle English Compilations: British Library, MS Harley 4012 and Lambeth Palace, MS 3597
SATOKO TOKANUGA

5. Florence Nightingale’s Reception of the Medieval Mystics, with Special Reference to Gertrude the Great of Helfta and Catherine of Siena
YOSHINOBU KUDO

Part II. Margery Kempe

6. Translating Jesus’s Voice in The Book of Margery Kempe
DENIS RENEVEY

7. Becoming 'hool a-ȝen': Grains of Integrity and Nourishment in The Book of Margery Kempe
LAURA KALAS

8. Margery Kempe and Saint Audrey of Ely: Reading The Book of Margery Kempe with Narratives of a Local Saint
MAMI KANNO

9. Pilgrimage Descriptions in The Book of Margery Kempe: A Comparison with Medieval Travel Journals, Pilgrim Guides, and Maps
FUMIKO YOSHIKAWA

10. Late Medieval Female Communities in The Book of Margery Kempe and the Sister-Book of Master Geert’s House
DIANA DENISSEN

11. Women on the Move: Asynchronous Feminisms and The Book of Margery Kempe
LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY

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Postscript: Medieval English Studies in Japan and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa
TAKAMI MATSUDA

Tabula Gratulatoria