Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism by Marina Warner
Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism by Marina Warner
Joan of Arc is the heroine every movement has wanted as their figurehead. In France, anti-Semitic, xenophoic, extreme right parties have claimed her since the Action Francaise in the 19th century. By contrast, Socialist, feminists, and liberal Catholics rallied to her as the champion of the dispossessed and the wrongly accused. Joan of Arc has also played a crucial role in changing visions of female heroism. She has proved an inexhaustible source of inspiration for writers, playwrights, film-makers, performers, and composers. In a single, brief life, several of the essential mythopoeic characteristics that throughout history have defined the charismatic leader and saint are powerfully and intensely condensed.
Even while Joan of Arc was still alive, but more so after her death, the heroic part of her story sparked narratives of all kinds, in pictures, ballads, plays, and also satires. Far more followed the publication, in 1841-9, of the Inquisition trial which had examined Joan for witchcraft and heresy. The transcript of the interrogations gives us the voice of this young woman across the centuries with almost unbearable immediacy. Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism analyses the symbolism of the Maid in her own time and in her rich afterlife in literature, politics, on the stage and screen. The cultural expressions are part of an ongoing historical struggle to own the symbol -- you could say, the brand.
In a new introduction, Marina Warner takes stock of the continuing contention, in politics and culture, for this powerful symbol of virtue.
Oxford University Press, Hardcover, 1981, 2013
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.