A radical reassessment of the trial of Joan of Arc that gives a new senseof Joan in her time.

The transcripts of Joan of Arc's trial for heresy at Rouen in 1431 and theminutes of her interrogation have long been recognized as our best sourceof information about the Maid of Orleans. Historians generally view theselegal texts as a precise account of Joan's words and, by extension, herbeliefs. Focusing on the minutes recorded by clerics, however, KarenSullivan challenges the accuracy of the transcript. In The Interrogation ofJoan of Arc, she re-reads the record not as a perfect reflection of ahistorical personality's words, but as a literary text resulting from thecollaboration between Joan and her interrogators.

Sullivan provides an illuminating and innovative account of Joan's trialand interrogation, placing them in historical, social, and religiouscontext. In the fifteenth century, interrogation was a method oftruth-gathering identified not with people like Joan, who was uneducated,but with clerics, like those who tried her. When these clerics questionedJoan, they did so as scholastics educated at the University of Paris, asjudges and assistants to judges, and as pastors trained in hearingconfessions.

The Interrogation of Joan of Arc traces Joan's conflicts with herinterrogators not to differing political allegiances, but to fundamentaldifferences between clerical and lay cultures. Sullivan demonstrates thatthe figure depicted in the transcripts as Joan of Arc is a complex,multifaceted persona that results largely from these cultural differences.Discerning and innovative, this study suggests a powerful new interpretivemodel and redefines our sense of Joan and her time.

Karen Sullivan is associate professor of literature at Bard College.