ABSTRACT
Joan of Arc's uniquely powerful appropriation by the French Right finds its origins in the heroine's own time; this affinity is then traced from the French Revolution, through Michelet's history, and the founding of the Action Francaise. Joan has been more than a symbol or cult: she was a phenomenon. The French Right had no need to borrow from other countries: its national patron saint came ready-made in the figure of Joan of Arc. The country's miraculous agent of unification and triumph was Joan the Maid, first during her brief lifetime and more so after her death. Jean-François Kahn points out that what we think of as rightist or leftist political tendencies were already operative in Joan's time. If Joan-as-Jesus inspired the cult of passive suffering and divine grandeur, what might call Joan-as-Napoleon coexists out of the need to commemorate earthly, military triumph, as Napoleon himself understood, in reestablishing in 1802 festivals honoring Joan, suppressed by Revolution in 1793.
