Cultural Depictions Of Joan Of Arc
Joan of Arc (also known as Jeanne d'Arc) has inspired artistic and cultural works for nearly six centuries. The following lists cover various media to include items of historic interest, enduring works of high art, and recent representations in popular culture. The entries represent portrayals that a reader has a reasonable chance of encountering rather than a complete catalog. Lesser known works, particularly from early periods, are not included.
Portrayals of Joan of Arc are numerous. For example, in 1979 the Bibliothèque Municipale in Rouen, France held a gallery containing over 500 images and other items related to Joan of Arc. In this article, many of the excluded items are derivative of better known representations. For instance, Schiller's play inspired at least 82 different dramatic works during the nineteenth century, and Verdi's and Tchaikovsky's operatic adaptations are still recorded and performed. Most of the others survive only in research libraries. As another example, in 1894, Émile Huet listed over 400 plays and musical works about Joan of Arc. Despite a great deal of scholarly interest in Joan of Arc no complete list of artistic works about her exists, although a 1989 doctoral dissertation did identify all relevant films including ones for which no copy survives.
The story of Joan of Arc was a popular subject for dramatization in the 1940s. In addition to Maxwell Anderson's play Joan of Lorraine and the Ingrid Bergman film Joan of Arc, there was also the 1948 RKO film The Miracle of the Bells starring Fred MacMurray, Alida Valli, and Frank Sinatra, about a dying film actress whose first and last role is Joan of Arc. There were also three radio dramatizations of the story of Joan during those years, one of them specifically written with a World War II framework.
Read more about Cultural Depictions Of Joan Of Arc: Organization of This Article, Literature and Theater, Operas, Oratorios, and Vocal Works, Images, Sculpture, Films
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“Ah, Marilyn, Hollywood’s Joan of Arc, our Ultimate Sacrificial Lamb. Well, let me tell you, she was mean, terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever known in this town. I am appalled by this Marilyn Monroe cult. Perhaps it’s getting to be an act of courage to say the truth about her. Well, let me be courageous. I have never met anyone as utterly mean as Marilyn Monroe. Nor as utterly fabulous on the screen, and that includes Garbo.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“If we can learn ... to look at the ways in which various groups appropriate and use the mass-produced art of our culture ... we may well begin to understand that although the ideological power of contemporary cultural forms is enormous, indeed sometimes even frightening, that power is not yet all-pervasive, totally vigilant, or complete.”
—Janice A. Radway (b. 1949)
“Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully enjoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch’s depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
Mother of God, where are they then? . . .”
—Francois Villon (1431–1465)
“Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)