At each step, we're given Joan's situation, the events of history as it played out, the growth of the legend, and the various interpretations of all of it by scholars, psychologists, and Hollywood. This book walks us through each stage of Joan's mission step-by-step. But 600 years after she was born, the story of the Maid of Orleans has been repeatedly built up and torn down by every perspective imaginable and used to attack or defend any position of thought. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.Ī straightforward biography of the life and times of Joan of Arc would be interesting enough for me. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove?Įvery era must retell and reimagine the Maid of Orleans' extraordinary story in its own way, and in Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, the superb novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time - a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose 'voices' moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson.

Joan of Arc by Kathryn Harrison