Book Under Suspicion

Hardcover.Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England examines the censorship issues that propelled the major writers of the period toward their massive use of visionary genres. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton suggests that writers and translators as different as Chaucer, Langland, Julian of Norwich, “M.N.,” and Margery Kempe positioned their work to take advantage of the tacit toleration that both religious and secular authorities extended to revelatory theology. The book examines controversial ideas as diverse as the early experimental humanism of Chaucer, censured beatific vision theology and the breakdown of Langland's A Text, the English reception of M.N.'s translation of Marguerite Porete's condemned book, Julian's authorial suppression of her gender, and the impact of suspect Continental women's activism on Kempe.