Joan of ARC: Her Story

This biography offers a detailed, truthful look at the life of the famous French saint, from her earliest years as a peasant child to her death, when she was burned at the stake for witchcraft. 10,000 first printing.

Joan of Arc means many things to many people: the incarnation of French patriotism, a Fascist mascot for anti-Semitism, the symbol of working-class resistance, the ultimate proto-feminist, the political prisoner, the innocent woman persecuted for heresy. In order to separate legend from fact, her uses from herself, Pernoud and Clin have ingeniously turned the mystifying question "Who is Joan of Arc?" into the more manageable "What is [her] historical record?" Joan's history was brief: a year of fighting, a year of imprisonment. In 1429, inspired by holy "voices," she traveled to the failing dauphin Charles (later King Charles VII) and declared that she would free the city of Orleans from his English enemies and lead him to his coronation. Shortly after fulfilling both prophesies, she was captured by the English, who tried her for heresy and burned her at the stake. In 1455, 24 years after her death, a new trial concluded that the English inquisition was improperly conducted and nullified its decision. Throughout their descriptions of these events, the authors draw upon copious letters and trial transcripts to present a vivid portrait of the young woman whose intelligence, courage, determination and unshakable faith astonished all of Europe. A brief introduction and a section of profiles of the major players make this thorough book accessible to the general reader. Though the writing is sometimes dry, Pernoud and Clin do an admirable job of bringing clarity to their complicated subject. This is the first English translation of a book published in 1986 in France. 12 illustrations, 8 maps.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A useful and innovative documentary history of the15th-century French insurrectionist. Pernoud, who died in April, has supplemented her previous biography, Joan of Arc (1966), by offering readers this annotated explanation of the controversial saints historical record. It isnt a biography per se and doesn't follow the standard biographical format of piecing together the available sources to present readers with a chronological narrative. Rather, Pernoud and Clin introduce readers to Joan as she has appeared in various documents, such as the one, contemporary with her lifetime, referring to her as a French peasant girl gathering armed forces to augment the beleaguered ranks of the dauphin's regiment. Information about her birth and childhood is unveiled only in chapter nine, since Joan rose from relative obscurity, and since no one cared enough to inquire formally into her origins until almost three decades after her death. The approach of Pernoud and Clin, both independent scholars in France, thus offers valuable insight into the nature of history and its practices; documents, as their book demonstrates, should always be weighed carefully against one another when any past event is being interpreted. The authors note that while many legends have emerged about Joan (the third section delves into some of these), more verifiable factual information exists about her than about Plato, Julius Caesar, or Jesus. The details of her military leadership at age 17, her imprisonment and trial, and her execution at the stake at 19 are all surprisingly well attested by letters (three penned by Joan herself), trial transcripts, contemporary histories, and ecclesiastical records. Pernoud and Clin are perhaps overly sympathetic to Joan's crusade and to the woman herself; her courage is described in almost hagiographic terms. Still, their well-crafted book also permits us to eyeball the documents and draw our own conclusions. Intriguing not only for Joans timeless enigma, but for an unusual methodology, which illuminates the detective work by which historians synthesize usable narratives. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This important and useful book is part biography and part reference work. On one level, it is the first English translation of a best-selling French biography now considered the standard in the field. Nontraditional in design, it traces the appearance of Joan as a documented historical character rather than adhering to a standard chronological sequence. Informing the narrative is a novel interpretation of Joan as a political prisoner. Moving beyond the narrative, the American translator (history, Southern Methodist Univ.) has added a series of appendixes containing valuable contextual material : maps, an annotated bibliography, a chronology and itinerary of Joan's life, a series of letters to which she affixed her signature, and three historical review sections. These materials discuss key historical events, provide biographical information on Joan's contemporaries, and discuss Joan's afterlife in history, literature, folklore, art, and iconography. Since Joan of Arc continues to fascinate modern audiences, this work should be of interest to general readers and scholars alike.?Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.