The fame of Joan of Arc began in her lifetime and, though it has
dipped a little now and then, she has never vanished from view. Her
image acts as a seismograph for the shifts and settlings of
personal and political ideals: Joan of Arc is the heroine every
movement has wanted as their figurehead. In France, anti-semitic,
xenophobic, extreme right parties have claimed her since the Action
Francaise in the 19th century. By contrast, Socialists, feminists,
and liberal Catholics rallied to her as the champion of the
dispossessed and the wrongly accused. Joan of Arc has also played a
crucial role in changing visions of female heroism. She has proved
an inexhaustible source of inspiration for writers, playwrights,
film-makers, performers, and composers. In a single, brief life,
several of the essential mythopoiec characteristics that throughout
history have defined the charismatic leader and saint are
powerfully and intensely condensed. Even while Joan of Arc was
still alive, but far more so after her death, the heroic part of
her story sparked narratives of all kinds, in pictures, ballads,
plays, and also satires. This was only heightened in 1841-9 by the
publication of the Inquisition trial which had examined Joan for
witchcraft and heresy. The transcript of the interrogations gives
us the voice of this young woman across the centuries with almost
unbearable immediacy; her spirit leaps from the page,
uncompromising in its frankness, good sense, courage, and often
breathtaking in its simple effectiveness. Joan of Arc into one of
the most fully and vividly present personalities in history, about
whom a great more is known, in her own words and at first hand,
than is, for example, about Shakespeare. However, this has not
stopped the flow of fictions and fantasies about her. Marina Warner
analyses the symbolism of the Maid in her own time and in her rich
afterlife in popular culture. The cultural expressions are part of
an ongoing historical struggle to own the symbol - you could say,
the brand. In a new preface to her study, Marina Warner takes stock
of the continuing contention, in politics and culture, for this
powerful symbol of virtue. Joan of Arc's multiple resurrections and
transformations show how vigorous the need for figures like her
remains, and how crucial it is to meet that need with
thoughtfulness. She argues that abandoning the search to identify
heroes and define them, out of a kind of high-minded distaste for
propaganda, lets dangerous political factions manipulate them to
their own ends. When Marine Le Pen calls on Joan of Arc's name, she
needs to be confronted about her bad faith and her abuse of
history.
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