Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67177 in Books
• Published on: 1996-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 175 pages

Synopsis
Compiled and translated by Willard Trask, with an historical afterword by Sir Edward Creasy. "The details of the life of Joan of Arc forma biography which is unique among the world's biographies in one respect, " wrote Mark Twain: "it is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us from the witness stand." Using only material compiled from the transcripts and testimonies of St. Joan's condemnation trials, Willard Trask has arranged her words into a unique autobiography. Trask was Ford Madox Ford's personal secretary, and later a National Book Award winner and a recipient of Bollingen Foundation grants for his work in medieval and primitive poetry.

Customer Reviews

This short book helps give Joan's story a more human view.
This is a wonderful little book, chronicling Joan's life, her Loire campaign and finally her trial and demise. The book is set up in a journal-type format, with headings for each day. The quotes which follow are generally taken from trial manuscripts, and their genuineness cannot be doubted. The book gives you a sense that you're reading the personal memoirs of Joan, and the close personal feeling makes it all the more enjoyable. Though it is not filled with as much historical minutiae as other, drier works, this book is simply wonderful. My only criticism would be that the book does not offer many quotes which cannot be found in other works. Also, there are sections that are not truly quotes, but more precisely summaries of Joan's actions set in her own point of view. This subtracts a bit from the sense that you're actually reading her own words. I do, however, treasure this book for its familiar feel and its granting a voice to the martyred St. Joan.

The Maid..
My interest in Joan of Arc follows 2 films on tv recently and regretting not paying enough attention to history in school.
I felt the need to know more about this strong facinating women and this book did exactly that.
Listening to Joan telling me what she was being told and her belief in gods word, and having the strength, belief and conviction to carry out his advice at such at young age was really amazing.I sometimes felt with the book i was standing next to her as she spoke or wrote some of the letters.

Joan of Arc, I believe she was a Christian
Actually, what resparked my interest in Joan of Arc was a an A&E documentary and the recent made for TV movie. As usual, I am always more impressed with the real story, which usually comes from a book. This is also my first book about Joan of Arc and I wanted to get something that would tell me about her without boring me and getting me caught up in long-winded frivolous details. This book is well-written, compiled, whatever and straight and to the point. It told me everything I wanted to know about Joan. I was impressed that she would not allow her soldiers, accomplices to use means of the occult to heal her wound when she was on the battlefield. Her last words when she was burning at the stake, "Jesus! Jesus!" would have been my exact same last words if I were ever God forbid in such a position. Those are always my words when I'm going through trials. What also amazed was that in the 1400s there were people, taking down Joans words, I mean actually writing them down and saving them, so we could have them here today, in the 1990s to interpret for ourselves. Now that's history.