ABSTRACT
Fifteenth-century England fostered the writing activity of at least four women, none of whom moved in the literary mainstream. The writings of Margery Kempe, Julians Barnes, Margaret of Anjou, and Margery Brews Paston open perspectives on the age’s popular piety, practical country life, royal pastimes, and domestic letters. All four contribute to a nuanced view of female language and experience in their century. Margery Kempe, the most fluent, was a religious pilgrim who traveled through northern Europe, Rome, and the Holy Land, a visionary whose emotionally shattering episodes made her conspicuous and vulnerable. Julians was a countrywoman with a brisk, affectionate schoolmarm’s approach to her topic, which was what any rural gentle person wanted to learn to do—hunt. As Margaret of Anjou’s letters show, she was an ardent practitioner of the hunt. Margery Brews emerges as a romantic, lovelorn girl, later as a wife busy with children and household.
