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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
35 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Literary Analysis?,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Interrogation of Joan of Arc (Paperback)
One can only be astounded by this book's approach to the subject. Historians have never considered the transcript of Joan of Arc's Condemnation Trial to be our "best source of information" about Joan: that distinction is granted to the transcript of the posthumous Rehabilitation Trial held in the 1450s, shortly after the English were driven from Rouen about 20 years after Joan's death. It is this transcript which has given us most of the details of Joan's life, related by 115 witnesses ranging from the villagers she grew up with to the clergy who took part in the trial which condemned her - including the three court notaries (Guillaume Manchon, Guillaume Colles, and Nicolas Taquel) who drew up the transcript of the Condemnation Trial itself. The latter document has long been known to be largely fraudulent, not due to the findings of modern "literary analysis" (as this book would claim) but because the above witnesses testified that significant portions were deliberately falsified on the orders of the presiding judge, Pierre Cauchon, in order to cast Joan in the worst possible light. Many of her statements were modified from their original form or deliberately mistranslated into Latin; the section at the end of the document was entirely fictional; her appeals to the Pope and the Council of Basle were edited out of the record, as was her chief rationale for retaining male clothing (i.e., she was being subjected to rape attempts in prison, and therefore didn't dare give up the security provided by her laced pants and tunic "for fear of being violated in the night", to quote the phrase used by Guillaume Manchon). Such testimony has always been the standard primary source used by the historians who are considered experts on Joan of Arc - from Jules Quicherat in the 19th century to Pierre Champion and Regine Pernoud in our own era. Why, then, are there books (such as this one) which appear to take no notice of such an important source, a source which, unlike the Condemnation Trial record, is both credible and exhaustive: DuParc's classic transcription takes up two hefty volumes totalling 1,137 pages, constituting a vast wealth of information about St. Joan's actual statements, Catholic beliefs, life, and death - and the moving passages in which her conviction was overturned by an Inquisition court on July 7, 1456, thereby paving the way for her eventual canonization. Why is this ignored in favor of the propaganda of Joan's enemies? My advice is to skip this book and buy something by Regine Pernoud or one of the other experts on the subject. "Literary analysis" is no substitute for historical analysis.
16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Passons-oultre,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Interrogation of Joan of Arc (Paperback)
Since I'm translating the trial transcript which this book analyzes, I thought I would comment. First of all, the author doesn't seem to realize that the Condemnation transcript has never been considered to be a reliable document, for a number of reasons: it doesn't follow the correct form and procedures of an Inquisitorial process (the trial was conducted by a political kangaroo court, not a valid court of the Inquisition); it contradicts itself at numerous points; one section was never notarized; and, most importantly, a number of the clergy who took part in the trial later testified that crucial sections were 'creatively edited' (so to speak) in order to gratify the English who were running the trial, thereby falsifying and distorting Joan's statements. If the author truly had an exhaustive knowledge of all of the texts related to Joan of Arc's life, the author would compare these texts to each other rather than dealing with one in isolation and treating it as if it were a "collaborative work" written jointly by Joan and her accusers (of all the strange notions connected with this subject, this has got to be one of the strangest). Additionally, the claim that her trial was not a political matter reveals a profound lack of understanding of the subject: the Rehabilitation witnesses testified that it was entirely a political charade, which involved intimidation of both the defendant and many of the clergy who had been forced to take part in it.In short, this book seems to be little more than the latest attempt at sensationalism, billed as a "radical reassessment" as a selling point; and it seems to be based on the currently trendy practice of pretending that historical documents are works of fiction, thereby giving authors an excuse to make up their own alternate version of events. "Literary analysis" is purely subjective, and therefore a convenient vehicle for anyone who wants to invent their own fantasized view of an historical person or event; and as such, it has no academic value. As Joan often said at her trial in response to irrelevant questions: "passons-oultre" (which we may colloquially render as "let's skip over this one").
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Rethinking of Meaning (of Joan of Arc, of history, of testimony),
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Interrogation of Joan of Arc (Paperback)
This beautifully written work is uniquely provocative of multiple, diverse interpretations of the person, story, really, the legacy that is Joan of Arc, and, perhaps more impressively, of the broader literary and philosophical questions involving witnessing, testimony, and the possibility of the truthful expression of divine communication. I am throughly baffled by the tenor of the negative reviews here. The author demonstrates, in my opinion, a thoughtful, intimate familiarity with the historical records in question, but I understood the work to be using them in order to explore the crucial questions underlying history. Instead of any ignorance of the subject matter, I understood the author to be undertaking the real work of a scholar that is pushing the boundary of what is known in order to come to understand the range of truths in history. Joan of Arc is far more than one historical person. This work, uniquely, in my opinion, demonstrates this most beautifully. Even if one is not interested in rethinking her history and meaning per se, the work raises radical questions of authority and action, knowledge and its demonstration, and does so in an engaging style of writing that often reads as mosaic as the portraits it paints of the warrior and as dramatic as the questions it asks of both history and its reader. If you are looking for a history text book account, look else where; if you seek an engaging and rewarding philosophical read, this is the work that you want.
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