《瑪潔麗•坎普之書》中的感官／敢觀詩學

The Poetics of Visual Sensuality in The Book of Margery Kempe

《瑪潔麗•坎普之書》（The Book of Margery Kempe）是目前所知最早的英文自傳性作品，主要記述十五世紀初前後一位世俗女子奇特的靈視異象與密契經驗，也因此其作者問題與權威性向來引發諸多討論。雖然現代讀者慣用口述／文書的對立架構來看待瑪潔麗與抄士間的關係，書中所呈現豐富而激越的感官視覺性卻超脫此簡單的二元對立。晚近評者對瑪潔麗身體與文本的密切關係多所關注，本篇論文以此為基礎進一步析論書中視覺、身體感官與文本間複雜的關連。《瑪潔麗之書》標示了多重視覺關係所建構的主體經驗，例如：瑪潔麗如何展現自己，旁人如何看待她，以及植基於觀看與被看關係之社會機制如何界定她的身體經驗。她一身雪白的衣裳與當眾嚎啕痛哭的行止，在在突顯她是引人側目的奇異景象，而書中除了時而神聖時而低俗的視象交錯並陳之外，更因為對瑪潔麗的朝聖行旅著墨甚多，使得敘述的進行勾勒出視覺的開展與感官的流動。此一視覺感官與文本交融的策略為主體身分的形塑另闢蹊徑，也展露出與文本生產斡旋與積極表達個人觀感的活潑場域。此外，對視覺性的關注也有助於重新反省關於書中結構組織是否流於鬆散的論辯。畢竟，書中敘述雖然看似漫無條理，卻是依循特定時空意象所引動視覺感官經驗的重現，以及由視覺感官所啟發的記憶搬演。根據這樣的理解，本論文探討瑪潔麗如何運用感官視覺及身體來挪用文識傳統並與之斡旋，以及瑪潔麗所見所行與其獨特的身體景象，如何在週遭社群眾目睽睽之下，藉由視覺感官主導的個人記憶，擘畫出複雜的靈視文本。

The Book of Margery Kempe, the first known autobiography in English about the mystical visions of a fifteenth century secular woman, has raised important questions about its authorship and authority. Although modern readers tend to conceive the relationship between the lay female author and her male clergial scribes in terms of binary opposition of orality and literacy, The Book resists such polarization by virtue of a variety of dynamic intervention of visual sensuality. Based on the recent critical attention to Margery's bodily devotion and the blurring of body and text, this paper further investigates the intricate problems of visuality, sensuality and textuality in The Book. Besides the interweaving of glorious visions and unsettling, haunting sights, The Book elaborates on Margery's travels to various churches and holy sites, especially the spectacle of her crying and her all-white wardrobe that attracts attention and censure wherever she goes. The text highlights a series of subject-positions by evoking Margery's multiple visual experiences: how she shows herself, how others see her, and how she lives out a gendered body produced and circumscribed by social institutions predicated on the relation of seeing and being seen (e.g., confession, affective piety, heresy, family status). The focus on visuality also allows for crucial reflections on debates over The Book's supposedly loose structural organization which critics attribute to the illiteracy of its female author. Yet perhaps this seeming randomness is a product of reconstruction along Margery's visually inspired memory of events (or memory images) that feature her sensual and physical experience. With such understanding, this study wants to examine (1) how the use of the physical and the visual in The Book appropriates and negotiates with the verbal and the intellectual; and (2) how Margery's sights, tears and visions form the textual contours of her personal memory in relation to the observing community.