The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1436) is an English narrative that conspicuously spans both sides of the sea. The Proem opens with an ‘Englyschman’ who comes ‘into Yngland’ from ‘beyonden the see [in] Dewchland’ (Proem, ll. 66–89), and a merchant’s voyage from England ‘seylyng ovyr the see’ (2.2.12) launches Book 2 of the text; the protagonist of the Book of course makes her own trips back and forth over the Channel, and the text traces her movements through a striking range of insular and Continental settings. So well-travelled is she, in fact, that the narrator proclaims the text could not possibly relate all of her experiences ‘as wel on yen half the see as on this halfe, on the watyr as on the lond’ (2.8.546). This chapter considers the geocultural ramifications of the Book’s curious ineffability topos. In this moment, the narrator asserts that overseas travel and trans-Channel perspectives are crucial to the text’s operations – yet this claim would appear to run counter to the aims of modern scholars who would characterise The Book of Margery Kempe as idiosyncratically ‘English’ or insular in its content, genre, or style. The Book’s first modern editors, for instance, sought to ascribe distinctive features of this text to ‘native influences’, only to acknowledge (however reluctantly) that the text incorporates Latin traditions as well as Continental literary models. Moreover, the Book’s protagonist traverses far-flung geographical spaces, languages, and nations beyond England. In other words, the Book’s ineffability topos suggests how profoundly maritime and cross-cultural contexts inform the protagonist’s journeys, and the text asks readers to marvel at her very capacity to transcend linguistic and national boundaries.

In approaching this English Book as a decidedly trans-Channel production, this chapter reassesses the narrative not only as hagiography or spiritual autobiography (as many have done so well) but also as an intricate work of travel writing; the wondrous Book transports the reader over ground and water and inhabits ‘many divers contres and places’ beyond England (Proem, l. 115), and the text exhibits all the while a complex narrative and stylistic richness. In narrating the protagonist’s many travels, the Book explores the complex relationship between language and national identity, often under unexpected circumstances.