To what extent has the rise of secularism in popular history depictions of Joan of Arc challenged traditional historiographical perceptions of her?

BY ALEX JOHNSON, YEAR 12, 2021

Joan of Arc has traditionally been seen through a religious lens, yet due to the gradual decline of religious influences on historical writing in Western democracies, these interpretations of her have been, according to historian Timothy Thibodeau, “refabricated by pop culture”1 and reflect growing secularity in the historiography of Joan of Arc. This has allowed modern audiences to see Joan outside of the religious sphere as a child, a political rebel, and a vulnerable girl. Joan’s status as a “pliable legend”2 has allowed producers of history to represent her according to their own purpose, methodologies and context. Mark Twain’s 1896 biography, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,3 examined the relationship of Joan’s youth and her actions and valour during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), a historically neglected aspect of her life. George Bernard Shaw superimposed his own socio-political rebellion onto Joan of Arc in his 1923 play, Saint Joan,4 portraying her as a revolutionary opposing the Catholic Church and the feudal system. Examining Joan’s crises of faith, Carl Theodor Dreyer in his biopic, The Passions of Joan of Arc (1928),5 used a humanist perspective to dismantle the religious perspective of Joan. In the film duology, Jeannette (2017)6 and Joan of Arc (2019),7 Bruno Dumont challenged modern French usage of Joan as a right-wing, monarchist icon through forming his secular interpretation. Due to the popularity and the accessibility of these secular popular interpretations, they have eclipsed the traditional portrayal of Joan as a religious figure, allowing for greater variety and nuance to emerge within depictions of her.

Joan of Arc (1412-1431) has long been considered a religious martyr and a nationalistic symbol of French victory in the Hundred Years’ War against England. In these orthodox interpretations which formulate the traditional historiography, medieval and early modern European writers defined Joan of Arc through their religious characterisation of her, utilising her religious affiliations to explain her military victory, the Battle of Orléans (1428-1429). However, this traditional view of Joan, observed in texts such as French Philippe-Alexandre de Charmettes’ Histoire de Jeanne d’Arc (1817)8 and Italian Christine de Pizan’s poem, Le Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc (1429),9 has been challenged in modern popular culture— a change prompted by the contemporary emergence of secularism in society. Secular producers of history, such as American author Mark Twain, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, and directors Danish Carl Theodor Dreyer and French Bruno Dumont have formulated revisionist, humanist depictions of Joan, resulting in a shift towards secular portrayals of her in the modern age. These portrayals have gradually become prominent in popular culture, challenging the traditional, orthodox views held by French and English writers, due to their accessibility and modern popularity. Thus, secularism has encouraged alternative perspectives of Joan, contesting the orthodox interpretations of her.

Joan’s youth was a facet of her life that was predominantly exempt from traditional historiography, yet Twain, in his novel, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, found himself compelled to examine the relationship between Joan’s youth and her actions in the Hundred Years’ War. While The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is hagiographic, Twain was taught at a young age to foster a scepticism towards the Catholic worship of saints,10 which culminated in Twain’s emphasis on her youth and her humanity in this text. From the beginning of the “selective biography,”11 Joan is characterised through her childhood nicknames to be “the Brave,” but also “the Bashful,”12 forming a partial divergence from traditional French and English historiography. The intrinsically

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human quality of bashfulness was never ascribed to her, displaying Twain’s scepticism of Catholic sainthood. Further, Twain’s interpretation of Joan was intimately shaped by his first interaction with her history, “it never seemed to [Twain] that the artists and the writers gave us a true picture of her,” due to the degradation of her character into singular aspects, such as her peasantry or religion.13 This solidified “his sympathy for the oppressed, rebellion against tyranny and scorn for the divine right of kings,”14 which is embodied in Twain’s depiction of Joan’s youthful characteristics. In a further digression from traditional accounts, Twain proposed no one, not even his virtuous Joan, should be able to access divine honours,15 echoing Twain’s “scorn for the divine right of kings.”16 Twain reckons with Joan of Arc’s divinity, portraying her simultaneously as a channel for divine power, and a spokesperson for the people,17 as her “vast powers and capacities were born in her,”18 not gifted to her on the eve of battle like in orthodox interpretations. In the context of its sources, The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was thoroughly researched and sourced by Twain, as evidenced by the biography’s reference list and the annotated sources which are today are part of the Mark Twain Papers, which reside at the University of California, Berkeley.19 Due to this methodology, Twain’s Joan was predominantly orthodox, although his purpose of exploring Joan holistically and his scepticism of saints has allowed a secular divergence from the historical canon. Twain’s work has not become part of the dominant discourse in Joan of Arc’s historiography, since he used his pure, youthful Joan to counter the suffragette movement, with her being the “paragon of Victorian girlhood.”20 However, by the time of her beatification in 1909, Joan was rapidly becoming a symbol of the movement. Thus, Twain’s youthful, humanly virtuous Joan has only subtly challenged traditional portrayals of Joan in orthodox historiography, yet his rendering of her childhood has inspired other thought-provoking works, such as Bruno Dumont’s film diptych.

George Bernard Shaw’s secular depiction of Joan in his play, Saint Joan, intrinsically departs from the orthodox depictions due to the transference of Shaw’s socialist beliefs onto his work. Shaw’s membership with the Fabian Society, a socialist group that aimed to gradually permeate the social, political, and intellectual spheres of English society, influenced his transcendentally rebellious interpretation of Joan. Shaw wielded Joan as an instrument with which he sought to instigate societal change; just as she rebelled against the Catholic Church and the feudal system in France,21 he too rebels against capitalism and conservatism in England. In the play, Shaw rhetorically questions the role and intentions of the societal elites, such as “kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and the like…they just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death,”22 which reveals the extent of his political purpose in constructing Saint Joan as he critiques the French 15th Century feudal system. This criticism of Medieval feudal society was, by extension, also a critique of his own hierarchical capitalist society. However, whilst he moved away from the orthodox depiction of Joan by representing her as an agent of reform against the Catholic Church and feudal society, his interpretation was contextually influenced by religion, as he was inspired by Pope Benedict XV’s canonization of Joan in 1920, despite his “atheism [that] was early ingrained.”23 In constructing Saint Joan, Shaw did not disclose his methodologies in how he selected evidence and constructed his image of Joan. However, Brian Tyson in his text, The Story of Shaw’s Saint Joan (1982), managed to discover the methods by which Shaw formulated his Joan, revealing that Shaw used correspondence with the British Library and miscellaneous private collections, finding vignettes that featured Joan— such as Shakespeare’s Henry IV—and the documents from her trial.24 Further, this variety of historical sources gave Shaw an array of perspectives, ranging from de Charmettes’ sympathetic perception to Shakespeare’s negative depiction of her. However, Saint Joan was crafted as a piece of historical fiction, and Shaw’s purpose was not strict historicity. The popular nature of historical fiction allowed Shaw to greater challenge traditional perceptions of Joan, due to the substantial reach his communicative form and the genre afforded him. Poet T. S. Eliot, in his 1924 criticism of the play, argued the depiction of Joan in Shaw’s play was revolutionary at the time, stating that Shaw had “turned her into a great middle-class reformer” which was “the greatest sacrilege,”25 due to the sheer extent of Shaw’s radical revisionism. Thus, despite Shaw’s mercurial sources, his rebellious depiction of Joan transcended and challenged the orthodoxy.

The silent biopic, The Passion of Joan of Arc, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, has become an important part of the popular historical discourse in the historiography of Joan, due to its timeless mutability and unconventionality. In his autobiographical notes, Dreyer wished to “penetrate

through the gilding on the legend to the actual human tragedy…I wanted to show that the heroes of history are people, too,”26 such views forming the humanist lens through which he portrays his Joan. As such, Dreyer investigates and challenges Joan’s faith, seeking signs of a crisis of devotion to God, a representation that had not yet been explored by modern producers of history. However, in moving away from the traditional religious narrative, Dreyer used historical imagination to build his representation of Joan, such as the interactions she had with individuals outside what had been recorded in documentary evidence relating to her trial. Yet, aside from his use of historical imagination, Dreyer adhered to an empirical approach to history, relying primarily on government documents and the transcripts from her trial. The evidence which shaped The Passion of Joan of Arc permitted his “reconstruction of the past [to have been] in a strictly factual manner,”27 while fostering a secular, “highly personal interpretation,”28 as seen through the music score of the film. Rather than religious hymns, O Mortalis Homo, by Franchois Lebertoul, was played before Joan was martyred,29 which was a secular ballade that commented on the arrogance of human aspirations. Dreyer’s use of this secular ballade lends itself both to his biopic’s unconventionality and his own secularity, as it emphasises his purpose in “show[ing] that the heroes of history are people,”30 not saints, such as traditional depictions of Joan in orthodox historiography. In preparing for the film, Dreyer employed Pierre Champion, a French historian, as the “historical advisor”31 for the film to encourage a historically accurate adaptation. Dreyer was noted to be “highly respectful of his source material,”32 further allowing his interpretation to have historicity. His popular communicative mode, the historical film, permitted his reading of Joan to transcend time in its fame. This is further enhanced by the mutability which characterises Dreyer’s humanist interpretation. The Passion of Joan of Arc has been metamorphosed by its audiences into different socio-political contexts, allowing for Dreyer’s narrative to be read as one about sexuality, feminism or fascism.33 Charles O’Brien argued that the audience’s context intimately influences the ways in which the film “challenges the habitus of the viewer”—be it their view on gender, religion or nationalism—which thus lends itself to the mutable changeability that The Passion of Joan of Arc offers its viewers.34 The variability of his Joan has been one of the foremost reasons for its endurable and wellrenowned nature. Thus, Dreyer’s empirical source material has allowed modern recognition and affirmation of The Passion of Joan of Arc as a historically accurate portrayal, and the mutability of Dreyer’s holistic delineation has encouraged its popular significance, with its unconventional reading extensively challenging her traditional, religious historiography.

Dumont’s productions of history, the historical biopics, Jeannette and Joan of Arc, created images of Joan that have become important to the historiography of Joan of Arc, which seeks to destabilise the traditional, religious perspectives of her, specifically those presented by the nationalist French political group, the Action française, who have used her name to further their political agenda, with their popular Joan of Arc parades (one having been performed as recently as 2021).35,36 Dumont’s departure from traditional depictions of Joan began in his casting: the same actress, Lise Leplat Prudhomme, stars in both films, aged 8 in Jeannette and only 10 in Joan of Arc. 37 This dramatic change in the physical portrayal of Joan, who was historically aged 17-19 during Joan of Arc’s timeline, further reveals Dumont’s secular portrayal of her, as he highlights the irrationality of Joan’s age in relation to her deeds and triumphs, as driven by the religious spirits sent to guide her. This forms a comment on his view of the irrationality of religion. In a 2010 interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Dumont states that he believed religion was “archaic,”38 thus presenting Joan to have theological doubts, as shown in the film when he has her questioning the presence of God during wartime. In response to her prayers at the beginning of the 2017 film, she notes, “and there is nothing; there is never anything,”39 highlighting the ubiquitous, silent question she asks throughout the film: if God truly existed, would there still be war and hate? One of Dumont’s foremost purposes was to resist and subvert the prevalent iconography of Joan by right-wing groups such as the Action Française’s political movement, established in 1899. Viewing Joan through the orthodox perspective, the Action française, a movement that stands for religious intolerance outside of Catholicism, believes Joan of Arc to embody “True France” with the values of patriotism, Catholicism, and monarchism.40 Therefore, Dumont’s interpretation of Joan sought to represent her as the opposite to the far-right’s presentation of her. Rather, he wanted to portray her as a child who followed her values, despite her disagreements with French aristocrats and generals which hindered her efforts.

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Indeed, in the second film, an unpatriotic Joan would rather have France lose the Hundred Years’ War than compromise her individual values—an example of her strength of character in resisting God’s instructions for her values. This digression from traditional historiographical representations further emphasises the original nature of Dumont’s films. Dumont’s only source—the French poet, Charles Péguy41—presents a severe limitation to the film, as Dumont’s historicity was challenged. Dumont’s modernisation of Joan’s narrative is reflected in his use of bathos rather than pathos throughout his films,42 which is demonstrative of his determination to challenge the orthodox view of the Action française, as he blended “religious ecstasy”43 with the contemporary world, weakening the traditional, religious perspective. While this does not give Dumont’s portrayal of Joan credibility in its historicity, it encouraged interest in Dumont’s films and thus his secular interpretation of Joan which undermined the politically motivated image of Joan promulgated by the Action française, which promoted the orthodox, Catholic interpretations of Joan to serve nationalistic purposes in the WWI era.

The emergence of secularism in popular historical representations of Joan has added a vitally important range of new interpretations to her broader historiography, allowing distinctions and variance to appear in representations of her. In this departure from orthodox portrayals of her, Joan’s youth, political rebellion, and religious doubt have been explored by secular producers of history, such as Twain, Shaw, Dreyer and Dumont, in a variety of mediums. Marina Warner noted in 2016 that Joan now “lies outside the main current of medieval mysticism…[she] prefer[red] secular channels of power to religious ones”44—evidence of this growing secular perspective. As Western society has become more accepting of secularism, following the 1960s decline of post-war religious fervour, irreligious producers of history have departed further from Joan’s religious metanarrative.

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FOOTNOTES

1 Timothy M Thibodeau, ‘Apocalypse Then, Apocalypse Now:

Rethinking Joan of Arc in the Twenty-First Century’, Quidditas 38 (2017): 175. 2 Martha Hanna, ‘Iconology and Ideology: Images of Joan of Arc in the Idiom of the Action Française, 1908-1931’, French Historical

Studies 14, no. 2 (1985): 217. 3 Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Harper, 1896). 4 George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan (Penguin Classics, 1923). 5 Carl Theodor Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Silent Film, 1928. 6 Bruno Dumont, Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc,

Historical Fiction and Drama, 2017. 7 Bruno Dumont, Joan of Arc, Historical Fiction and Drama, 2019. 8 Philippe-Alexandre Le Brun de Charmettes, Historie de Jeanne d’Arc, 4 vols (Paris: Artus Bertrand, 1817). 9 Christine de Pizan, ‘Le Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc’ (France, 1429). 10 Ted Gioia, ‘How Joan of Arc Conquered Mark Twain’, America

Magazine, 12 April 2018. https://www.americamagazine.org/artsculture/2018/04/12/how-joan-arc-conquered-mark-twain. 11 David Foster, ‘On the Theme of Mark Twain’s Personal

Recollections of Joan of Arc’, The Mark Twain Annual 13, no. 1 (2015): 43. 12 Mark Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (Harper, 1896): 53.

13 Daniel Crown, ‘The Riddle Of Mark Twain’s Passion For Joan Of

Arc’, The Awl, 3 April 2012. 14 Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain: A Biography (New York: Harper and Bros, 1912): 81-82. 15 Wilson Carey McWilliams, ‘Divine Right: Mark Twain’s “Joan of Arc”’,

The Review of Politics 69, no. 3 (2007): 329–52. 16 Ibid.: 82.

17 Albert E. Stone, ‘Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc: The Child as Goddess’,

American Literature 31, no. 1 (1959): 18. 18 Twain, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc: 340. 19 Ronald Jenn and Linda A. Morris, ‘The Sources of Mark Twain’s

“Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”’, Mark Twain Journal 55, no. 1/2 (2017): 55. 20 Crown, ‘The Riddle Of Mark Twain’s Passion For Joan Of Arc’. 21 Michael Billington, ‘Saint Joan’, the Guardian, 12 July 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/jul/12/theatre2. 22 George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan (Penguin Classics, 1923): 160. 23 Michael Hardwick and Mollie Hardwick, The Bernard Shaw

Companion (J. Murray, 1973): 176. 24 Brian Tyson, The Story of Shaw’s Saint Joan (McGill-Queen’s Press – MQUP, 1982). 25 T. S. Eliot, ‘A Commentary’, The Criterion, no. 3 (October 1924): 1–5.

26 Dan Nissen, ‘Carl Theodor Dreyer Extended Biography’. 27 Paul Rotha and Roger Manvell, Movie Parade, 1888-1949: A

Pictorial Survey of World Cinema (Studio Publications, 1950): 74. 28 Ibid.

29 Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc. 30 Nissen, ‘Carl Theodor Dreyer Extended Biography’. 31 T. A. Kinsey, ‘The Mysterious History and Restoration of Dreyer’s

“The Passion of Joan of Arc”’, The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 1, no. 1 (2001): 96. 32 Jean Drum and Dale D. Drum, My Only Great Passion: The Life and

Films of Carl Th. Dreyer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000): 126. 33 Laura Dorwart, ‘Dystopias Are for Girls: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The

Book of Joan’, Dilettante Army, 7 December 2017, http://www. dilettantearmy.com/articles/dystopias-are-for-girls. 34 Charles O’Brien, ‘Rethinking National Cinema: Dreyer’s “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc” and the Academic Aesthetic’, Cinema Journal 35, no. 4 (1996): 21. 35 Eleon, ‘In Paris, Action Française Manifested in Tribute to Joan of Arc – RT in French’, 2021, https://goodwordnews.com/ in-paris-action-francaise-manifested-in-tribute-to-joan-ofarc-rt-in-french/, https://francais.rt.com/france/86449-parisrassemblement-action-francaise-en-hommage-a-jeanne-d-arc/. 36 Jennifer Kilgore, ‘Joan of Arc as Propaganda Motif from the Dreyfus

Affair to the Second World War’, Revue LISA/LISA e-Journal.

Littératures, Histoire Des Idées, Images, Sociétés Du Monde

Anglophone – Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-Speaking World, no. Vol. VI – n°1 (1 January 2008): 279–96. https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.519. 37 Graham Fuller, ‘Joan of Arc Review – Tough Little Number’, https://theartsdesk.com/film/joan-arc-review-%E2%80%93-toughlittle-number.

38 Damon Smith, ‘Bruno Dumont, “Hadewijch”’, Filmmaker Magazine | Publication with a Focus on Independent Film, Offering Articles,

Links, and Resources. (blog), 22 December 2010, https:// filmmakermagazine.com/16909-bruno-dumont-hadewijch/. 39 Dumont, Jeannette. 40 Martha Hanna, ‘Iconology and Ideology: Images of Joan of Arc in the Idiom of the Action Française, 1908-1931’, French Historical

Studies 14, no. 2 (1985): 216. 41 Eve Tushnet, ‘“Joan of Arc” Is One Weird Work of Hagiography’,

America Magazine, 20 June 2020, https://www.americamagazine. org/arts-culture/2020/06/20/joan-arc-one-weird-workhagiography. 42 Kevin J. Harty, Medieval Women on Film: Essays on Gender,

Cinema and History (McFarland, 2020): 191. 43 Glenn Kenny, ‘Review: Joan of Arc Is a Young Headbanger in

“Jeannette”’, The New York Times, 12 April 2018, sec. Movies, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/movies/jeannette-thechildhood-of-joan-of-arc-review.html . 44 Marina Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (Great

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Priya Mehra

1. Where did the inspiration for your extension work come from?

My focus on empathy stemmed from a discussion in Modern History about the initial support for Hitler’s leadership in the early days of Nazi

Germany. To help us understand that dynamic, our teacher encouraged us to view the history through a lens of empathy: to try and connect with the desperation of many Germans during that period, in order to comprehend their willingness to support the Nazi regime. After that lesson, I became intrigued by the role of empathy in the construction of history, and its need to coexist with both logic and historical evidence.

Inspired by our History Extension studies on R.G.

Collingwood’s theory of historical imagination, and the flaws within Leopold von Ranke’s empiricist history, I began to see empathy as being able to contribute to a more holistic view of history, and the initial premise for my project was born!

2. What was your planning process?

After forming an initial question – although it would change significantly over the next few months! – I worked on familiarising myself with my topic through broad research. Over the holidays, I sifted through journals and library databases, including the State Library, pulling together general ideas and key words to help me navigate the broad subject matter. After talking to my teacher, I then started looking into specific producers of history and their contributions to the debate on the role of empathy in history, which would form my paragraphs. As I collated quotes and references (to help with later footnoting!), I was able to begin putting together a very general essay plan which, although it looked quite different to my finished essay, helped me navigate and ground my research throughout the process.

3. What challenges did you come across?

I was definitely challenged by the need to condense so many months of research into only 2,500 words, especially when every idea and quote seemed to add value to my argument. My first completed draft was about 4,000 words! While I really enjoyed the research process, having to decide what to prioritise and what to leave out was definitely one of my biggest challenges. I also found the transition from research to writing to be a difficult one, particularly because I felt that there was so much I still didn’t know. However, once I began the writing process, I quickly realised that there were barely enough words to encompass the research I had already done, let alone any more!

4. How did you overcome them?

Working with my teacher definitely proved to be invaluable in overcoming these challenges.

As part of the feedback on my first draft, whole paragraphs were crossed out for being overly repetitive or going on too much of a tangent, and while it was a bit of a shock at first, it was beyond helpful in the long run. In relation to making the leap from research to writing, realising that the two weren’t mutually exclusive really helped!

Any time I found a knowledge gap while writing, my extensive record of references allowed me to quickly refer to articles and book chapters to consolidate my understanding.

5. What advice would you give future students?

I’d definitely recommend utilising your teacher throughout the project, whether it be for content, advice, or just to work through ideas you have.

While they may not already be an expert in your chosen topic, their skills and willingness to explore and engage with your project is really helpful. I also encourage you to take advantage of the holidays to commit to your research, as

I found I was most productive when I was able to immerse myself deeply in the content, which often required several hours at a time.