Joan of Arc: A Saint for All Reasons - Studies in Myth and Politics (review)

This book comprises six essays on Joan of Arc, focusing on the portrayal of the Pucelle from the seventeenth century to our days, mainly in France, but also inAmerica and through the medium of cinema. Five of these articles have already appeared, in French, in the book entitled Jeanne d'Arc en garde à vue (also edited by Goy-Blanquet and published in 1999), the new article being Claude Grimal's study of the image of Joan of Arc in American drama and literature. All of these essays are useful, and in some cases important, contributions to our understanding of the phenomenon of the rise in celebrity of the figure of Joan, and they certainly merit translation to make them accessible to a non-French-speaking anglophone readership. D. Goy-Blanquet's 'Shakespeare and Voltaire Set Fire to History' gives an overview of the early reception of the figure of the Pucelle, from the Burgundian chroniclers to Tudor historians and, of course, Shakespeare, outlining the influence these sources had on later writers, in particular, Voltaire, Robert Southey and Schiller. F. Michaud-Fréville ('Person vs. Personage: Joan of Arc in Seventeenth-Century France') provides a perceptive analysis of the tendency in seventeenth-century French literary sources to view Joan as interesting dramatic material rather than as a historical character, while N. Margolis ('Rewriting the Right') focuses on the use of Joan of Arc in right-wing French politics between 1824 and 1945, from Michelet and Anatole France to Bernanos and Brasillach, with special attention devoted to Carl Dreyer's 1928 film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. A full filmography is provided in the same volume by R. Blaetz ('Joan of Arc and the Cinema'), who surveys the cinematic versions of Joan's life. C. Grimal's 'The American Maid' investigates a relatively neglected area: the ways in which America made Joan into an American icon — a precursor of Protestantism, a symbol of Independence and a role model for female politicians. J. Darras ('A Myth of Trial') untangles the strands of the myth of Joan of Arc in France, noting the ambivalence of the Christian writers such as Jean Guitton towards her and the reluctance of the Church to proceed to her canonization. Darras rightly points out the tension between Joan the saint and Joan the warrior, guilty of having encouraged (and probably committed) bloodshed; he thus indirectly reveals the main weakness of this book: its title. Quite apart from the fact that 'a saint for all reasons' does not really make sense, it also has the disadvantage of presenting Joan's sanctity as an obvious given — which is misleading. Joan, as is well known, was only canonized in 1920, a bargaining chip used by the Church to try to moderate the secularizing zeal of the French State, and as a saint she has not inspired much of a cult. Her statue is found in many a French church, but it is the one that is ignored.