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Product Description
This volume contains Bernard Shaw’s 1924 play, "Saint Joan". It is a ‘chronicle play’ in six scenes, and an epilogue that revolves around Joan of Arc. It elucidates her immense personality, problems, and potential. As well as the play itself, Shaw also furnishes a number of chapters on Joan of Arc that offer interesting insights into her life and character. This interesting and thought-provoking play will appeal to fans and collectors of Shaw’s seminal work, and would make for a great addition to any collection. The chapters of this book include: “Joan the Original and Presumptuous”, “Joan and Socrates”, “Contrast with Napoleon”, “Was Joan Innocent or Guilty”, “Joan’s Good Looks”, “Joan’s Social Position”, “Joan’s Voices and Visions”, “The Evolutionary Appetite”, etcetera. Many vintage texts such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now, in an affordable, high-quality, modern edition. It comes complete with a specially commissioned biography of the author.
Amazon.com Review
Joan of Arc, born in 1412, was burned at the stake in 1431, canonized by the Catholic Church in 1920, and, like most saints, whitewashed by history. Canonization tends to strip a saint of supposedly un-Christian attributes such as rebelliousness, pride, and intolerance. And Joan, despite having been a stubborn, haughty, naive, even foolish girl, has for much of history been remembered only as a pious martyr. However, George Bernard Shaw's play, Saint Joan, completed in 1925, began the modern rehabilitation of the icon as a fully human, fallible character--not to mention a poster girl for teenage rebellion and feminism. Shaw's Joan, like the real Maid of Orleans, leads the fight to drive the English out of her native France, insists on direct communication with her God instead of submitting to the mediation of Catholic priests, and refuses to dress, speak, or act according to traditional notions of how women were expected to behave. Until the closing scene of Shaw's play, however, neither Joan nor her foes are cast in neatly heroic terms. Both are earnestly pursuing their partial visions of the truth. In the play's famous epilogue, Shaw suggests that even 400 years later, most of us are so limited by our own perspectives that we are unable to tell the difference between a saint and a heretic. "O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints?" Joan asks, preparing for her death. "How long, O Lord, how long?" --Michael Joseph Gross
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