Saint Joan
Assigned by 2 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1923
- Form
- Drama
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 160 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendSaint JoanPenguin Classics, 2003Includes Shaw's long preface, which the programs that assign the play also assign.
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A chronicle play in six scenes and an epilogue about Joan of Arc, written three years after her canonisation. Joan, a farm girl who hears voices, talks her way to the Dauphin, raises the siege of Orléans and crowns him at Reims, then is captured, tried by the Inquisition for heresy and burned in 1431. Shaw presents her judges as reasonable men defending Church and feudal order against a Protestant and a nationalist before her time. The epilogue brings the dead and living together to ask whether the world is ready for its saints.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Saint Joan are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
