The Many Joans of Arc

This book centres on the phenomenon of the Joans of Arc—a global medievalist trend of women being celebrated as their nation’s own Joan. Though these women bear the name of a medieval French woman, use of the title is bound to diverse and shifting preoccupations, prejudices, and prerogatives of the post-medieval world. Joan’s legend has been moulded to fit a vast array of sometimes strange, often problematic agendas. The overarching aim of this book is to demystify the implications that arise when the ghost of Joan leaves the temporal and spatial bounds of medieval France to haunt post-medieval spaces and possess post-medieval personas.