Reviews

‘Warner’s book combin(es) a rich compendium of original observations about Joan’s life with a survey of how succeeding centuries have created their contrasting images of Joan.’

Joan Llewellyn Barstow, American Historical Review

‘An eloquent book…To accomplish her task Marina Warner has probed the printed sources of the period, picked the brains of the best modern scholars, and read widely in literature and world history.’

Mary Gordon, Chicago Sun Times

‘Elegantly written, thoughtful (as one would expect from the author of Alone of All Her Sex), imaginative, sensitive. Warner ranges through iconographic, allegorical, literary, dramatic, operatic, cinematographic, linguistic, biographical, and political evidence to present a history of Joan and of her subsequent representations.’

Choice

‘Joan of Arc - soldier, virgin, saint - is known to virtually every schoolchild. Her myth has captured the world’s imagination and, like all potent myths, it acts as a cultural Rorschachean test: each age sees her in light of its own moral preoccupations…Marina Warner seeks to examine the nature of the myth itself and to find out why it has such imaginative force. She tells, in effect, the story of the story - and does it extremely well.’

Jean Strouse, Newsweek

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