Comparing Piety in The Wakefield Mystery Plays, The Book of Margery Kem

Comparing Notions of Piety in The Wakefield enigma Plays, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Le Morte DArthurThe monastic spiritstyle that Launcelot and his knights adopt after their conversion is one that Margery Kempe mightiness approve of -- doing penance, singing mass, fasting, and remaining abstinent. (MdA, 525) But Launcelots change of heart is not motivated by the emotions that move Kempe, nor is his attitude towards paragon the same as can be found in The Book of Margery Kempe and The Wakefield Mystery Plays. In the Wakefield plays, God wins piety through outright threats. He appears to his followers in visions, as he does in Kempe, but never as a benevolent or comforting presence. Kempe receives her only comfort in life through Gods constant reassurances of her holiness in the face of the condemnation of her peers in the Creation play, it is God who coils out Adam and Eve, just as Kempe is cast out of traveling party after traveling party. The fear of world similarly puni shed keeps other Wakefield characters in line. Noah begins his play with a idiom detailing the mistakes of the those who have angered the Lord First on footing and then in hell . . . but to those no harm befell/who trust in his truth. And God responds Vengeance I will take,/ On farming for sins sake,/My grimness thus will wake/Both great and small. (WP, 91) God promises that All shall perish less and more that so spurned my plan. Fa... ...dA, 523) whole caboodle Cited and ConsultedKempe, Margery. The Book of Margery Kempe. Ed. Sanford Meech and Hope and Emily Allen. capital of the United Kingdom Oxford UP, Early English Text union 212, 1940 rpt. 1961. Lawton, David. Voice, Authority, and Blasphemy in The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery Kempe A Book of Essays. Ed. Sandra J. McEntire. New York Garland, 1992. 93-116. Malory, Sir Thomas. Works. Ed. Eugene Vinaver. London Oxford University Press, 1966.Mann, Jill. The Narrative of Distance, the Distance of Narrative in Malorys Mort e DArthur. The William Matthews Lectures 1991 delivered at Birkbeck College, London. Rose, Martial, ed. and trans. The Wakefield Mystery Plays. New York Norton, 1961.