'Reinventing Jeanne': The Iconology of Joan of Arc in Vichy Schoolbooks, 1940-44
1994; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/002200949402900406
ISSN1461-7250
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Political Studies
ResumoFrom the late nineteenth century onward, the female symbols of Marianne and Joan of Arc began to be claimed by conflicting elements of a rapidly polarizing French society. They were presented as bitter rivals -the one adopted by republican or leftwing nationalists, the other increasingly by integral nationalists. Originally forged by a pantheon of chroniclers, from the contemporaneous view offered by Christine de Pisan to Voltaire's disparaging description, to Michelet's and then Bernanos' contrasting eulogies, the image of Jeanne d'Arc had long been exploited to evoke sentiments and defend causes as diverse as patriotism, anticlericalism, mysticism, gallicanism, anglophobia, anti-semitism, imperialism and anti-feminism.1 Ironically, Joan herself, her trial testimony suggests, had never claimed any such complexity. The Maid (Pucelle) or bonne Lorraine, as she was also known, had perceived her purpose as a straightforward one: to obey Saint Michael's voices and rid France of the English. Her dramatic death at the stake in 1431 ensured that her myth would live on. However, the controversy generated by the Joan legend's post-1878 antirepublican overtones dictated that this representation of Joan would be afforded little attention in Third Republic classrooms presided over by a bust of Marianne in other words, in Jules Ferry's crucible of modern French republicanism.2 The situation would change radically, though, after 1940, when Philippe Petain's ultra-nationalist collaborationist regime found in Bernanos and Maurras' vision of Joan the crystallization of a policy of sexism, anglophobia and Catholicism, and introduced it with a vengeance into the French educational curriculum. Those scholars who have touched upon the role of the Joan myth in Vichy schools have concentrated almost exclusively upon anglophobic and religious themes, at the expense of gender con-
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