ABSTRACT
As women mystics, Margery Kempe (c. 1373–c.1440) and Mirabai (born c. 1500) were especially known for performative devotion that led them out of the domestic sphere to which women were usually consigned into public spaces, where their shameless devotional displays provoked slanderous responses from those who witnessed them. This essay explores the similar ways in which slander secures for both women an authentic sense of devotional interiority. At the same time, it points to contrasts in the transmission of both women's experiences—Kempe's written tradition and Mirabai's oral transmission—to explore the different cultural contexts of each as well as the differing stakes of the connection between gendered voices and devotional interiority for their respective audiences.
