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

Zusatztext

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 Schillers 1801 romantic tragedy, Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans). The author elucidates Schillers appropriation of themes from Euripidess Iphigenia plays, chiefly the quality of sublime sanctity, which transforms Joans 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 - Voltaires La pucelle dOrléans and Shakespeares 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 Verdis opera Giovanna dArco 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 books final chapter examines Shaws Saint Joan and finds that the Irish playwrights vociferous complaints about Schillers romantic flapdoodle belie a surprising affinity for Schillers approach.

Autorenportrait

John Pendergast is an Assistant Professor of Russian at West Point. He holds doctoral and masters degrees in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York, a masters degree in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Arizona, and a bachelors 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.

Weitere Details