Joan of Arc on the Stage and Her Sisters in Sublime Sanctity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. The Palimpsest of Euripides, Shakespeare, and Voltaire

   • John Pendergast

   Pages 1-28

3. Sublime Sanctity: Schiller’s New Tragic Joan

   • John Pendergast

   Pages 29-84

4. Lacuna and Enigma: Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco in Light of Schiller’s Play

   • John Pendergast

   Pages 85-130

5. Patriotic Elegy and Epic Illusion: Schiller’s Johanna in Russia

   • John Pendergast

   Pages 131-233

6. The Skeptic Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks: Shaw’s Saint Joan—Concluding Thoughts on Joan in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

   • John Pendergast

   Pages 235-268

7. Back Matter

   Pages 269-281

   PDF

This book examines the figure of Joan of Arc as depicted in stage works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially those based on or related to Schiller’s 1801 romantic tragedy, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans). The author elucidates Schiller’s appropriation of themes from Euripides’s Iphigenia plays, chiefly the quality of “sublime sanctity,” which transforms Joan’s image from a victim of fate to a warrior-prophet who changes history through sheer force of will.  Finding the best-known works of his time about her – Voltaire’s La pucelle d’Orléans and Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part I – utterly dissatisfying, Schiller set out to replace them. Die Jungfrau von Orleans was a smashing success and inspired various subsequent treatments, including Verdi’s opera Giovanna d’Arco and a translation by the father of Russian Romanticism, Vasily Zhukovsky, on which Tchaikovsky based his opera Orleanskaya deva (The Maid of Orleans).  In turn, the book’s final chapter examines Shaw’s Saint Joan and finds that the Irish playwright’s vociferous complaints about Schiller’s “romantic flapdoodle” belie a surprising affinity for Schiller’s approach.

• Joan of Arc
• Schiller
• Euripedes
• Verdi
• Vasily Zhukovsky
• Bernard Shaw
• Saint Joan
• Tchaikovsky
• Shakespeare
• Voltaire

“This well-researched study is a clear and compelling exercise in Comparative Joan of Arc and the subtleties of influence. Pendergast posits a dramatic lineage that begins with Schiller’s appropriation of Euripides’ Iphigeneia plays and extends via dramas and operas to George Bernard Shaw. His scholarly prose is highly readable, and I strongly recommend this useful and informative book.” (Gail Hart, Professor of German, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine)

“Elegantly interweaving the myriad tales, legends, plays, and operas about Joan of Arc, Pendergast shows his mythic heroine the greatest affection—all the while lamenting the absence of accurate details about her real life and deeds. The book explores both essence (Joan of Arc as embodying “sublime sanctity”) and context to explain how the heroine’s image morphed to reflect changes in the political and social status of women in 18^th and 19^th century European society. In Tchaikovsky’s opera on the subject, which Pendergast greatly illuminates, Joan of Arc becomes the ideal image of the liberated Russian woman at the expense of the superfluous man. A book of rich ideas, richly presented.”  (Simon Morrison, Professor of Music and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Princeton University)


“Joan of Arc on the Stage is a model of how philological rigour and critical imagination can shed new light not just on Schiller’s play, but on its sources and adaptations. Traversing an impressive range of languages, its amplifies our understanding of European drama, makes a compelling case for the centrality of Russia to the burgeoning field of world literature, and lays the foundations for a long overdue reassessment of Tchaikovsky’s opera, The Maid of Orleans.” (Philip Ross Bullock, Professor of Russian Literature and Music, University of Oxford)

 

 

• Department of Foreign Languages, United States Military Academy, West Point, USA

  John Pendergast

John Pendergast is an Assistant Professor of Russian at West Point. He holds doctoral and master’s degrees in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York, a master’s degree in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Arizona, and a bachelor’s degree in Music from Birmingham-Southern College. A graduate of the Russian program at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, his research focuses on music and letters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russia and Germany.

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