1st Edition

Fresh Verdicts on Joan of Arc

Edited By Bonnie Wheeler, Charles T. Wood Copyright 1996
    334 Pages
    by Routledge

    334 Pages
    by Routledge

    Joan of Arc has long piqued the historical imagination, for it seems impossible that a peasant-maid couldhave led the French army, crowned her king, and then been burned as a heretic, only later to be found a saint. This volume of original essays seeks to shed light on these mysteries, but also to explain why, even in the 20th century, Joan of Arc remains such a potent symbol. Scholars here employ the latest tools of historical analysis, literary criticism, and feminist inquiry to reveal why verterans of her military campaigns found her to have been a remarkable commander; why so many of her contemporaries and near-contemporaries, churchman and poets alike, found it possible to accept the validity of her mission and her voices; why modern politicians and literary and cinematic artists have used her as the symbolic vehicle for their own visions; and why the Catholic Church finally decided to canonize her in 1920. The essays are heavily cross-referenced, and are capped off with a reflective epilogue by R gine Pernoud, long the dean of Joan scholars and former director of the Centre Jeanne d'Arc at Orleans. Also includes maps.

    Preface, Charles T. Wood; Joan of Arc's Sword in the Stone, Bonnie Wheeler; A Woman as Leader of Men: Joan of Arc's Military Career, Kelly DeVries; Joan of Arc's Mission and the Lost Record of Her Interrogation at Poitiers, Charles T. Wood ; True Lies: Transvetism and Idolatry in the Trial of Joan of Arc, Susan Schibanoff; Was Joan of Arc a sign of Charles VII's Innocence?, Jean Fraikin; Transcription Errors in Texts of Joan of Arc's History, Olivier, Bouzy; I Do not Name to You the voice of St. Michael: The Identification of Joan of Arc's Voices, Karen Sullivan; Readers of the Lost Arc: Secrecy, Specularity, and Speculation in the Trial of Joan of Arc, Steven Weiskopf; Joan of Arc and Chrstine de Pizan: The Symbiosis of Two Warriors in the Diti de Jehanne d'Arc, Christine McWebb; PR Pas PC: Christine de Pizan's Pro-Joan Propaganda, Anne D. Lutkus and Julia M. Walker; Speaking of Angels: A Fifteenth-Century Bishop in Defense of Joan of Arc's Mystical Voices, Jane Marie Pinzino; Martin Le Franc's Commentary on Jean Gerson's Treatise on Joan of Arc, Gertrude H. Merkle; Why Joan of Arc Never Became an Amazon, Deborah Fraioli; Joan of Arc's Last Trial: the Attack of the Devil's Advocates, Henry Ansgar Kelly; Jeanne Au Cin ma, Kevin J. Harty; The Joan Phenonmenon and the French Right, Nadia Margolis; Epilogue: Joan of Arc or the Survival of a People, R gine Pernoud; Appendices: Joan of Arc and Her Doctors, Marie-Veronique Clin; Aspects of Material Culture in the Paris Region at the Time of Joan of Arc, Nicole Meyer Rodrigues; Contributors

    Biography

    Bonnie Wheeler, Charles T. Wood

    "...the essential modern starting point for Joan of Arc studies...a volume of immenst variety and richness and the editors must be congratulated for doing the scholarly and general community such a service in regard to the evergreen topic of Joan the Maid." -- Parergon