Articles by Maybelle Leung
Palimpsestes, 2022
This article addresses the adaptation of the medieval devotional work, The Book of Margery Kempe ... more This article addresses the adaptation of the medieval devotional work, The Book of Margery Kempe (1438), in Robert Glück’s New Narrative novel Margery Kempe (1994). Speaking as the character “Bob”, Glück retells Margery’s mystical experiences and desires in a blend of modern prose, Middle English, and Medieval Latin. I argue that this mixed form fosters an intimate but disruptive reading experience that estranges Kempe’s medieval world from modern readers; in turn, Glück poses the limits of talking about love and the self in writing. I begin by tracing the formal choices made in Barry Windeatt’s modern English translation of Kempe’s Book that Glück used, before describing the mixing of historical and modern languages in his retelling of Kempe’s life. I conclude that the recent republication of Glück’s novel (2020) proves its continued relevance, as it raises the queer possibilities of translation and adaptation for us today.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Margery Kempe Society, 2022
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Magistra: A Journal of Women's Spirituality in History, 2019
This paper studies the development of the word "flesh" in the Ancrene Wisse, a 13th c. guide for ... more This paper studies the development of the word "flesh" in the Ancrene Wisse, a 13th c. guide for anchoresses living the contemplative life. Through "flesh," I argue, the Wisse prescribed a particularly affective and absorptive manner of reading that, in the end, acknowledged the creative capacities of allegory and metaphor.
I begin with the early descriptions of the anchoress' own body as "brittle flesh," as fragile "vessels" that are in turn receptive to the word of God. Then, I turn to the body of Christ described in several Passion scenes (particularly Parts Two and Four), a body marked with "holes" and suffering, and that which anchoresses are called to identify with in an affective practice of piety. Lastly, I turn to the image of "shield"--a form of flesh--that appears in Part Seven, in the allegory of Christ as the pursuing Knight and the anchoress as a guarded lady. Here, I conclude, the "shield" refers to the "flesh" of the allegorical page itself, and draws the reader into fleshly union with the text. As such, I maintain, the crucial image appearing at the end of Part Two--of the anchoress scraping the earth out of her own grave every day--is a call for her to read with attention to the body, to figurative language, and to metamorphosis.
I developed this paper at a talk given at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (2017), and later worked with the advice of Prof. Audrey Walton (2019). The version included here is a draft only. Please contact me if you wish to view a good copy, which is not included here for copyright reasons.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Thesis Chapters by Maybelle Leung
This is the Bibliography for my Masters Major Research Project/Thesis, which examined the working... more This is the Bibliography for my Masters Major Research Project/Thesis, which examined the workings of contractual masochism in The Book of Margery Kempe. I chart my argument through Margery's relationships with Christ, with churchly authorities, and with readers of her book.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
My Masters Major Research Project examined the workings of contractual masochism in The Book of M... more My Masters Major Research Project examined the workings of contractual masochism in The Book of Margery Kempe. I chart my argument through Margery's relationships with Christ, with churchly authorities, and with readers of her book.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Presentations by Maybelle Leung
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This session welcomes 15-20 minute papers on any thematic crossover between courtly love or fin a... more This session welcomes 15-20 minute papers on any thematic crossover between courtly love or fin amor, a knightly submission to a lady of desire, and affective piety, the envisioned marriage of oneself to Christ.
While modern audiences tend to understand the former as “secular,” pertaining to Arthuriana, the latter remains associated with “sacred” literature and women mystics. However, as Barbara Newman (2013) argues, crossovers between the two forms of love were abundant; as Sir Gawain’s courtesy modelled him in the form of Christ, the beguine mystic Marguerite Porete imagined herself in a courtly wooing by God. Together, courtly love and affective piety stressed the complete surrender of the self to the will of the other.
We seek papers that ask: How did courtly love and medieval devotion alike approach the love object? How did both forms of love imagine the soul and the flesh? Did erotic consummation prevent spiritual salvation, or did it guide the soul towards it? Was the devotional only spiritual, or did it also promote carnality? A final interest lies in how we understand the medieval love of the sacred in our secular age.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
• Forms of love in the Middle Ages
• Asceticism vs. eroticism
• Chivalry, Christianity, and sexuality
• Erotic motifs in religious devotion
• The art of love; amatory writing
• Bodies and bodily transgressions
• Sacrality/secularity in art and music
• Landscapes, animals, and other natural motifs of desire
• Latin vs. vernacular language
• In contemporary criticism: queer theory, psychoanalysis, etc.
• Contemporary adaptations (popular culture, romance fiction, etc.)
Please submit proposals (paper title and 250-word abstract) through the submission portal at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2021.
If you have any questions, contact Maybelle Leung (York University) at leungm20@yorku.ca.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper examines how spatial distance in Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls constructs her femini... more This paper examines how spatial distance in Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls constructs her feminine erotics. By removing the self from the centre of Christ, I argue, Porete projects herself as embodied with the divine and asserts a feminine erotics of deferral. My paper will address, for instance, Porete's 'Ravishing Farnearness' as a spatial metaphor for God's love. Lastly, given recent interests in Middle English translations of her Mirror, I will discuss its pairing with the short text of the Showings of Julian of Norwich in the Amherst Manuscript to further illuminate upon Porete's erotics of distance.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Abstract: In her Mirror of Simple Souls, Marguerite Porete describes the “farness” of divine love... more Abstract: In her Mirror of Simple Souls, Marguerite Porete describes the “farness” of divine love as “greater nearness,” closing the gap between self and Christ in mystical union (trans. Babinsky 218). Recent scholarship has accordingly studied space and movement in Porete’s self-authorizing Mirror. Scholars have addressed its movements of reading (Barr), its celebration of verbal transmission (Meï et al.), and its imaging of spiritual topography (Acosta-García and Serra Zamora). For Anne Carson, Porete’s project is even “de-creation,” an ongoing process of self-annihilation. In accordance, my paper examines how spatial distance—gaps of farness, movements of travel, and motions of deferral—in Porete’s work constructs the distinctly feminine erotics of her project. By removing the self from the center of Christ, I argue, Porete projects herself as embodied with the divine and asserts a feminine erotics of deferral. My paper will address Porete’s depicting of the “Ravishing Farnearness” as God’s love (135) and her imagining of Marian devotion as voyaging toward “freeness” (202), among others; it will also position these alongside Le Roman de la Rose and other relevant discourses on sexual and divine love. Lastly, considering recent interests in the Middle English translation of Porete’s Mirror (Cré; Stauffer and Terry), I discuss its unique variations alongside the short text of the Showings of Julian of Norwich included with it in the Amherst Manuscript (British Library MS Additional 37790). In addressing the Middle English Mirror translated long after Porete’s death, my paper demonstrates that her erotics of distance transcend the stretches of time as well, dwelling among the English mystics of the late fourteenth century and beyond.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This paper studies the emotional resonances of the 15 th c. Book of Margery Kempe that has been c... more This paper studies the emotional resonances of the 15 th c. Book of Margery Kempe that has been captured for modern audiences, in B.A. Windeatt's popular modern English translation (Penguin Books 1985) and Robert Glück's adaptation of Kempe into contemporary gay love (HIGH RISK Books 1994). I offer a comparison between the two, to see how Margery Kempe has been translated for our time, with attempts to bridge our culture with her own.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
At the heart of the Man of Law's Tale lies a contradiction. Its female protagonist, Custaunce, fa... more At the heart of the Man of Law's Tale lies a contradiction. Its female protagonist, Custaunce, faces jarring inconstancy: first cast off to Syria, then to Northumberland, and finally returning to Rome, her tumultuous circumstances challenge her namesake, constancy. When washed up to Northumberland, Custaunce's speech is notably "a maner Latin corrupt," marking her cultural foreignness to the country and the new name she gives its king, Alla (l. 512). This article will position Custaunce's "corrupt" speech as part of a greater logic of dismemberment that frames her tale, and that explains why her inconstancy is crucial to her character development. I trace Custaunce's tale to others that I believe parallel her narrative-the Pardoner's Tale and the Physician's Tale-which also feature disruptions in the speech and the namesakes of their principal characters. Moreover, I bring in Reason's discourse from the influential Roman de la Rose in order to explain how Custaunce's inconstancy is actually part of a greater statement on linguistic instability. As Custaunce evokes a disjuncture between constancy, her namesake, and the inconstancy of her experiences, so does she capture Reason's claim-that the relationship between name and thing are inherently unstable.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Articles by Maybelle Leung
It was published on Jan. 12, 2022 on the The Margery Kempe Society website. The post was approved by Dr. Laura Varnam and Dr. Laura Kalas, and edited by Emily M. Harless. The URL is: https://themargerykempesociety.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/maybelle-leung-staging-submission-in-the-book-of-margery-kempe-and-story-of-o-a-study-in-contractual-masochism/
I begin with the early descriptions of the anchoress' own body as "brittle flesh," as fragile "vessels" that are in turn receptive to the word of God. Then, I turn to the body of Christ described in several Passion scenes (particularly Parts Two and Four), a body marked with "holes" and suffering, and that which anchoresses are called to identify with in an affective practice of piety. Lastly, I turn to the image of "shield"--a form of flesh--that appears in Part Seven, in the allegory of Christ as the pursuing Knight and the anchoress as a guarded lady. Here, I conclude, the "shield" refers to the "flesh" of the allegorical page itself, and draws the reader into fleshly union with the text. As such, I maintain, the crucial image appearing at the end of Part Two--of the anchoress scraping the earth out of her own grave every day--is a call for her to read with attention to the body, to figurative language, and to metamorphosis.
I developed this paper at a talk given at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (2017), and later worked with the advice of Prof. Audrey Walton (2019). The version included here is a draft only. Please contact me if you wish to view a good copy, which is not included here for copyright reasons.
Thesis Chapters by Maybelle Leung
Conference Presentations by Maybelle Leung
While modern audiences tend to understand the former as “secular,” pertaining to Arthuriana, the latter remains associated with “sacred” literature and women mystics. However, as Barbara Newman (2013) argues, crossovers between the two forms of love were abundant; as Sir Gawain’s courtesy modelled him in the form of Christ, the beguine mystic Marguerite Porete imagined herself in a courtly wooing by God. Together, courtly love and affective piety stressed the complete surrender of the self to the will of the other.
We seek papers that ask: How did courtly love and medieval devotion alike approach the love object? How did both forms of love imagine the soul and the flesh? Did erotic consummation prevent spiritual salvation, or did it guide the soul towards it? Was the devotional only spiritual, or did it also promote carnality? A final interest lies in how we understand the medieval love of the sacred in our secular age.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
• Forms of love in the Middle Ages
• Asceticism vs. eroticism
• Chivalry, Christianity, and sexuality
• Erotic motifs in religious devotion
• The art of love; amatory writing
• Bodies and bodily transgressions
• Sacrality/secularity in art and music
• Landscapes, animals, and other natural motifs of desire
• Latin vs. vernacular language
• In contemporary criticism: queer theory, psychoanalysis, etc.
• Contemporary adaptations (popular culture, romance fiction, etc.)
Please submit proposals (paper title and 250-word abstract) through the submission portal at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2021.
If you have any questions, contact Maybelle Leung (York University) at leungm20@yorku.ca.
It was published on Jan. 12, 2022 on the The Margery Kempe Society website. The post was approved by Dr. Laura Varnam and Dr. Laura Kalas, and edited by Emily M. Harless. The URL is: https://themargerykempesociety.wordpress.com/2022/01/12/maybelle-leung-staging-submission-in-the-book-of-margery-kempe-and-story-of-o-a-study-in-contractual-masochism/
I begin with the early descriptions of the anchoress' own body as "brittle flesh," as fragile "vessels" that are in turn receptive to the word of God. Then, I turn to the body of Christ described in several Passion scenes (particularly Parts Two and Four), a body marked with "holes" and suffering, and that which anchoresses are called to identify with in an affective practice of piety. Lastly, I turn to the image of "shield"--a form of flesh--that appears in Part Seven, in the allegory of Christ as the pursuing Knight and the anchoress as a guarded lady. Here, I conclude, the "shield" refers to the "flesh" of the allegorical page itself, and draws the reader into fleshly union with the text. As such, I maintain, the crucial image appearing at the end of Part Two--of the anchoress scraping the earth out of her own grave every day--is a call for her to read with attention to the body, to figurative language, and to metamorphosis.
I developed this paper at a talk given at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (2017), and later worked with the advice of Prof. Audrey Walton (2019). The version included here is a draft only. Please contact me if you wish to view a good copy, which is not included here for copyright reasons.
While modern audiences tend to understand the former as “secular,” pertaining to Arthuriana, the latter remains associated with “sacred” literature and women mystics. However, as Barbara Newman (2013) argues, crossovers between the two forms of love were abundant; as Sir Gawain’s courtesy modelled him in the form of Christ, the beguine mystic Marguerite Porete imagined herself in a courtly wooing by God. Together, courtly love and affective piety stressed the complete surrender of the self to the will of the other.
We seek papers that ask: How did courtly love and medieval devotion alike approach the love object? How did both forms of love imagine the soul and the flesh? Did erotic consummation prevent spiritual salvation, or did it guide the soul towards it? Was the devotional only spiritual, or did it also promote carnality? A final interest lies in how we understand the medieval love of the sacred in our secular age.
Topics include (but are not limited to):
• Forms of love in the Middle Ages
• Asceticism vs. eroticism
• Chivalry, Christianity, and sexuality
• Erotic motifs in religious devotion
• The art of love; amatory writing
• Bodies and bodily transgressions
• Sacrality/secularity in art and music
• Landscapes, animals, and other natural motifs of desire
• Latin vs. vernacular language
• In contemporary criticism: queer theory, psychoanalysis, etc.
• Contemporary adaptations (popular culture, romance fiction, etc.)
Please submit proposals (paper title and 250-word abstract) through the submission portal at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2021.
If you have any questions, contact Maybelle Leung (York University) at leungm20@yorku.ca.