Joan of Arc - Hardcover

Gordon, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670885371 ISBN 13: 9780670885374

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2000

Synopsis

A biography of this enduring figure searches for reasons why this failed soldier and executed heretic has survived in the consciousness of Western Civilization

About this title

About the Author

Mary Gordon, Professor of English at Barnard College, is the bestselling author of five novels, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. Her books include The Rest of Life, The Other Side and Spending. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

Adult/High School-Gordon introduces the peasant girl of Domr‚my as a typical young woman of her time, yet stresses emphatically the ways in which, "There is no one like her." She dramatically presents what is universally known of Joan-young, countrified, riding astride in men's armor amid fleur-de-lis banners. Readers see Joan entering Orl‚ans in triumph, controlling her frightened horse when a pennant she is carrying is accidentally set afire. Then she is a commoner at Charles's side in the cathedral at Rheims, holding her standard as he is crowned king of France. At each of the tableaux, Gordon delves into significant deeper meanings. She is particularly insightful in determining the element of danger for Joan in all of her relationships-with Charles, with the treacherous Burgundians, with the English, and ultimately with the church. She cites Joan's courage and tenacity of vision and her confidence in divine support. Gordon concludes, "Ardent, impatient, boastful, resistant, implacable, she is like all great saints a personality of genius." Teens are sure to be intrigued by her.-Frances Reiher, Fairfax County Public Library, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

One would expect nothing less from Gordon (Spending) than a splendid, spare account of Joan's life--and she delivers in this slender but satisfying account, a new entry in the Penguin Lives series. The facts of Joan of Arc's life are straightforward: she was born in 1412, in Domr?my, France, to a peasant family; she participated in the Hundred Years' War but was in active military service for only a year; and she was burned at the stake at 19. Novelist Gordon, who has always been fascinated by the young heroine, emphasizes Joan the girl. She acknowledges that the 17-year-old could have been a wife and mother, a fully adult member of her community. But Gordon's Joan "has a young girl's heedlessness, sureness, readiness for utter self-surrender." This biography rehearses the well-known highlights in Joan's short life: the voices she heard who charged her with the mission to save France; her participation in the Battle of Orl?ans and the coronation of King Charles VII; her trial by an ecclesiastical court, where she was charged with witchcraft, heresy and idolatry. The judges, Gordon tells us in a deft and clever interpretation, connected "Joan's cross-dressing to the sin of idolatry. [They] were accusing Joan of making an idol of herself." Gordon recounts Joan's excommunication and execution in spare and arresting detail. The strength of this "biographical meditation" lies in the penultimate chapter, in which Gordon investigates the numerous re-creations of Joan on stage and screen, from Carl Dreyer's 1928 film The Passion of Joan of Arc to Verdi's opera Giovanna d'Arco-a chapter that comes like an unexpected dessert at the end of a rich feast. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Illiterate adolescent peasant girl, prompted by inner voices, turns knight-redeemer of her countrytemporarily. A life of the martyr Joan of Arc (141231), presented (contradictions intact) by a lifelong admirer. Gordon (Seeing Through Places, 2000, etc.), whose works often portray women confronting faith, pinpoints how Gift, chance, accident, coincidence converged during the Hundred Years War to manifest such a heroine, crusading to crown an unwilling Dauphin as Gods elect who would ransom France. Gordon highlights how Joan vindicated here prophetic status by manipulating symbols (her divinely designed battle standard, her armor, and her male dress) to leverage untrustworthy men: the king who soon shunned his champion, the companions-in-arms who fought then flitted, the French royals who sold her out, and the accusers who tried and burned her as a heretic. Gordon qualifies the myths surrounding this incredibly brave and resilient down-to-earth naf: Joan was surprised when a wound she foretold actually hurt, and shaken when confronted with wars human misery. A chronology stresses the enforced brevity of Joans career: a fitful tactician alive only in action (when Joan let her military judgment and her religious scruples diverge), both her victories and her charisma vanished soon enough. Gordon (like Joans rehabilitators) does not discuss the difficult issues of inspiration and its verification, however, leaving us to wonder about the question that stands at the center of the legend: namely, whose heavenly directives are genuine? And who can we know? All contention is focused upon that strong unviolated female body, remote from standard hierarchies of sex, class, deference, chivalry, orthodoxy. Though analogies intended as timeless fall short (Girls arent supposed to brag), Gordon trenchantly discerns how virginity granted autonomy, and one senses that Joans mission required neither gender. Surveying the manifold purposes served by this idiosyncratic saint, Gordon characterizes her best: the patroness of the vivid life. A bold biographical meditation that persuades the skeptic to meditate on the inexplicable something Joan made happen, and keeps on happening, to this day. (First serial to Commonweal; author tour)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670885371
• ISBN 13: 9780670885374
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180