Voice Authority, Authority, and Blasphemy in The Book of Margery Kempe.

Incidental references: Both Margery Kempe and WL challenge ecclesiastical authority through their consideration in English of materials normally dealt with in Latin by the clergy. Although WL was not, like Kempe, a layperson, the effect of PPl’s various kinds of anticlerical discourse is to deny the validity of hierarchy. Both writers express discomfort with the doctrine of the Trinity, with Dame Study resorting to blatant blasphemy (B.10.51-57), albeit in an orthodox cause, that questions the very possibility of a morally valid vernacular writing.