Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured by Kathryn Harrison: A Book Review

Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured
Author: Kathryn Harrison
Genre: Nonfiction, Biography, History
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: 2014
Pages: 400
Source:Netgalley/Publisher in exchange for an honest review
Synopsis: The profoundly inspiring and fully documented saga of Joan of Arc, the young peasant girl whose "voices" moved her to rally the French nation and a reluctant king against British invaders in 1428, has fascinated artistic figures as diverse as William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Carl Dreyer, and Robert Bresson. Was she a divinely inspired saint? A schizophrenic? A demonically possessed heretic, as her persecutors and captors tried to prove?

Every era must retell and reimagine the Maid of Orleans's extraordinary story in its own way, and in Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured, the superb novelist and memoirist Kathryn Harrison gives us a Joan for our time—a shining exemplar of unshakable faith, extraordinary courage, and self-confidence during a brutally rigged ecclesiastical inquisition and in the face of her death by burning. Deftly weaving historical fact, myth, folklore, artistic representations, and centuries of scholarly and critical interpretation into a compelling narrative, she restores Joan of Arc to her rightful position as one of the greatest heroines in all of human history.

My review: The story of Joan of Arc is a classic underdog tale. When France was on the verge of losing their nation and suffered under the English invasion, a peasant girl who claimed she heard the voices of the angels and saints to take up arms and help restore the nation by crowning Charles VII in Reims. Joan claims she is the fulfillment of the prophecy that a virgin would restore France. Interweaving folklore and facts, this biography recounts the life of Joan of Arc to show the reader Joan’s accomplishments and controversy.

I have always been fascinated by Joan of Arc, a peasant who inspired many soldiers and dressed as a man, defying the conventions of women at that time. Her story and her tragic end seemed like a good fable that I wondered about what was fact and fiction. Did Joan really hear the voices of the angels and saints? While I was intrigued about Joan of Arc, I never really had the chance to get around to learn about her life. However, when this book was on Netgalley, I finally got the chance to learn about Joan of Arc. I immediately gobbled the book up within twenty-four hours.

I have always thought of Joan of Arc as a saintly person, whom the average person could not connect with. However, In this biography, Joan is portrayed as human and flawed girl. She was pious but was also vain and prideful. She was courageous, yet she had many fears. She was a woman who bravely faced many trials and who never wavered in her beliefs. She was very intelligent and had a good memory. This Joan was very relatable to the reader that we could not help but root for her and sympathize with her plight.

Overall, this book is about Joan’s unwavering faith in God. While the book does not answer the question straightforwardly of if Joan was God’s agent, it is clear that the author admires her subject and believes that Joan is who she claims to be. I also liked how the author analyzes Joan through how she is portrayed in popular culture. This shows how her story has captured people’s imaginations of her throughout the centuries.Therefore, this book is a great introduction to Joan of Arc for anyone who is looking to depict the facts and the myths of Joan.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein: A Book Review

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer Author: Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein Genre: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Religion, Mythology Publisher: Harper Perennial Release Date: 1983 Pages: 256 Source: Personal Collection Synopsis: With the long-awaited publication of this book, we have for the first time in any modern literary form one of the most vital and important of ancient myths—that of Inanna, the world’s first goddess of recorded history and the beloved deity of the ancient Sumerians. The stories and hymns of Inanna (known to the Semites as Ishtar) are inscribed on clay tablets which date back to 2,000 B.C. Over the past forty years, these cuneiform tablets have gradually been restored and deciphered by a small group of international scholars. In this groundbreaking book, Samuel Noah Kramer, the preeminent living expert on Sumer, and Diane Wolkstein, a gifted storyteller and folklorist, have retranslated, order...

Guest Post: The Ladies-in-Waiting: Lady Isabel Baynton by Alexandra Walsh

Today's guest writer is Alexandra Walsh. She is the author of The Catherine Howard Conspiracy , which is a historical thriller surrounding the infamous Tudor queen. In this guest post, Mrs. Walsh discusses the life of Catherine's lady-in-waiting, Isabel Baynton. This post will be sure to fascinate fans of Tudor era. If you enjoy her post, please pick up a copy of The Catherine Howard Conspiracy ! Thank you, Mrs. Walsh! The Ladies-in-Waiting – Lady Isabel Baynton by Alexandra Walsh One of the most enjoyable things about writing an historical novel is discovering the tiny details that make the period real on the page. While I was researching The Catherine Howard Conspiracy , I spent a great deal of time hunting out the life stories of the women who surrounded the young queen in order to create a group of realistic friends and confidants. There are some well-known names linked with Catherine and her downfall: Lady Jane Boleyn,...

Guest Post by Aleksey Linetskiy: The Women Behind the Klondike Story

Today's guest writer is Aleksey Linetskiy. He is the co-author of Finch and Hawk: The Klondike Letters , which is a unique yearly subscription in which the reader reads a story by mail. In this guest post, he introduces us to a few historical women of the Klondike era. Some of these women are Alice Freeman, Flora Shaw, and Helen Dare. Thank you, Mr. Linetskiy! The Women Behind the Klondike Story Before we began writing Finch and Hawk: The Klondike Letters , my partner, Alona Umansky, and I spent a great deal of time researching the Klondike Gold Rush. We were interested in finding the stories of people who maybe didn’t become rich and famous but still went through the experience of a great stampede. As we were reading the newspapers of the time and firsthand accounts, it became very clear to us that we wanted to tell at least part of the story through the women’s eyes. There were so many incredible women who underto...

History from a Woman's Perspective- A Book Blog

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