Dimensions
129 x 197 x 14mm
Commemorated both in stained-glass windows and celluloid, both in Christian tradition and existential drama, Joan of Arc has beyond any question been a woman for all centuries. Her iconic presence seems as powerful today as it has ever been, yet, poised mysteriously between myth and history, her appeal has been as elusive as it has been strong.
Should we celebrate the suffering saint or the feisty feminist fighter? Was she "La Pucelle", the maiden, whose great pride was her feminine chastity - or the laddish soldier-girl who mucked in with the roughest and crudest of comrades-at-arms? Mary Gordon's answer is that she was both these things - and much more: a flawed heroine and a realist visionary, a woman for all time and yet definitively of her own age. This biography explores all the multifarious aspects of the Maid of Orleans and the compelling hold she has had on the imagination of all humankind.
