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Joan of Arc

The following research is on the subject of Joan of Arc.

The story of Joan of Arc has proven an inspiration to historians

and artists for centuries. No contemporary portrait of Jeanne d'Arc is known to exist, for instance, and yet there are hundreds

of fanciful posthumous representations of her in stone, in bronze,

in plaster, in stained glass, in fresco, on canvas, and on wood (Sackvill-West 1-2).

Joan appeared at an important juncture in history and played

an essential role. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, England and France were at each other's throats in a conflict known as the Hundred Years' War. The immediate cause was a dynastic quarrel over who should rule France (Pernoud 55-56). Edward III had claimed the right to the French crown, and he had thus started the war that would reduce France to a belligerent group of disunited provinces possessing no common language and a king who was little better than a figurehead. After the treaty of Troyes, Henry V became the regent of France, and when he married Catherine of Valois, daughter of Charles VI of France, he was also entitled to succeed to the crown and bring about what Edward III had desired to accomplish in the first Place (Winwar 8-9).

Joan appeared against this background during a period in which there were many religious cults and such developing. This was a period when the end of the world was expected, when there were death cults embodying the pessimism of the age. The English occupied the capital; the Dauphin was weak and spineless and held captive by unscrupulous ministers; and there was little courage evident in the land. Joan of Arc provided a most unlikely savior, a woman of the common class. She said that voices from God told her she must expel the English and have the Dauphin crowned King. Her strength was derived from the new fusion of the old time religious faith and the new force of patriotism. She appeared in 1428 and inspir...

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Joan of Arc. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 01:26, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1686731.html