By: Lucy Mackintosh
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe wrote their works around the same time, and about a similar subject of religion and being a woman in the church. The difference between the translations in their works is that Julian of Norwich wrote, or had scribed, her work in Middle English in the 1400s, and then her work had been rescribed after being found in the 1640s; Kempe had her work scribed in Middle English in the mid 1400s, but it was not discovered and published until 1936 (and in the original Middle English in 1940) and has only gone through a few versions of translations and changes, and is, therefore, closer to her original work than the works of Julian.
The translations of Julian’s texts throughout the ages are really important because as a woman in a world of male contemporaries, especially writing a religious text, her ideas, feelings, and thoughts are extremely important to the Christian ideology at the time. As a woman writer in a male-dominated culture, it is so important that her legacy can live on.
Even with the revisions to her work, there is evidence that Julian, herself, constantly revised and reviewed her works as a way to get the best version of her ideology out into the world, so if people today are still editing and modernizing her work, it is almost in the spirit of her, because it is important what she is saying, and she worked hard to make that as clear as possible; with the continuing evolution of language, even if we are not reading her exact words, are still getting the essence, the importance, of what she is trying to say.
With both authors, they wrote at the end of the Middle Ages, therefore their language is not incredibly difficult to understand, and Kempe’s work was even published in the original form and language four years after the initially published edition. But there are still things that are indicative of the time that they wrote in. For example, Julian uses the phrase “that is to say” as a way to paraphrase or move on to a point she is making; Chaucer, a contemporary of Julian, also used this phrase quite frequently.
The main issue with the versions of the works in the Norton Anthology of English Literature: Vol. A, (ed. 10) is that both texts have a footnote at the beginning saying that the works have been freely edited and been given modern spellings, and in Kempe’s case, “silently translated” words. (432, 443). Modern spellings do not sound that bad and are actually really helpful, but having the edition of Julian’s text from the 1400s transcribed from multiple transcriptions, then edited from the 1978 version, which is in the Norton Anthology version, sounds completely convoluted, and may take away some, if not a significant, bit of the meaning that Julian had in mind. Kempe’s edition is a little less heavily edited, but the same idea applies, in that there is a bit of censorship, intentional or not, for the sake of expanded readership.
One of the biggest positives for the translations of these texts is that they are more easily accessible for people throughout the world, and they make a difference as religious texts written by women that have lasted for hundreds of years. Overall, while the execution of the translations and transcriptions could leave some to be desired, the essence of the works is still intact and being shared.
Further Resources
To translate modern texts and phrases to Old English, click here
Works Cited
Baker, Denise Nowakoski. “Re-Visions and A Book of Showings.” Julian of Norwich’s “Showings”: From Vision to Book, Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 135–164. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7ztxbt.11.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Margery Kempe.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 17 May 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margery-Kempe.
Yoshikawa, Fumiko. “Logical Discourse Markers in Julian of Norwich.” Anchoritism in the Middle Ages: Texts and Traditions, 1st ed., University of Wales Press, 2013, pp. 47–58. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qhckb.11.
Greenblatt, Stephen, editor. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 10th ed., Vol. A, W.W. Norton, 2018.