Fayetteville Library Hosts Three-part Joan of Arc Presentation in August 2012
In celebration of the 600th anniversary year of the birth of Joan of Arc, Arkansas writer Maeve Maddox will present a three-part film presentation called A Joan for All Seasons: Joan of Arc in History and the Movies at the Fayetteville Library on August 5, 12, and 19 from 2-4 p.m. in the Walker Community Room.
Although no birth record exists, the traditional birth date assigned to Joan of Arc is January 6, 1412. Her first documented appearance in the historical records is 1428. According to her own testimony, she was “19 or thereabouts” in 1431 when she was tried and executed in Rouen, France. After 600 years, the French heroine remains a figure of fascination all over the world.
Dr. Maddox will be comparing what is known about the historical Joan of Arc with the cinematic versions portrayed in six feature films made about her in the 20th century.
The six movies to be compared are Cecil B. DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1917), Theodore Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948), Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan (1957), Christian Duguay’s television mini-series Joan of Arc (1999), and Luc Besson’s The Messenger (1999).
The series will conclude on Sunday, August 19 with a showing of the rarely-viewed 145-minute version of Fleming’s 1948 Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. The film’s original release was a heavily-edited 100-minute version.
Dr. Maddox is the author of Portrayals of Joan of Arc in Film: From the Historical Joan to Her Mythological Daughters, Edwin Mellen, 2008, and of the essay on Joan of Arc in the two-volume textbook Icons of the Middle Ages published in 2012 by the Greenwood Press. She has degrees in English from Oklahoma City University and the University of London (England), and holds the M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas. The original editor of the blog Daily Writing Tips, Maeve Maddox writes on topics of language and popular culture. Her academic writings are published under the name Margaret Joan Maddox. Her most recent publication is a collection of essays about the writing craft called So You Want to Write! Tips and Pep Talks to Get You Started and Keep You on Track, DAEL Publications, 2012, available at Amazon.
Of related interest:
Retiring the Maid: The Last Joan of Arc Movie
Portrayals of Joan of Arc in Film: From the Historical Joan to Her Mythological Daughters
Maeve Maddox at DailyWritingTips
Maeve Maddox
Maeve Maddox writes about popular culture, English usage, and education. Her most recent books are WORD RAGE, a guide to peaceful coexistence as American English-speakers, and THE FABERGE FLUTE, a cozy mystery set in 1980s London.