ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century, it was widely believed that Joan of Arc's image suffered at the end of the ancien regime from the defamation of Voltaire's The Maid of Orleans, and from the desecration of revolutionary iconoclasts. This chapter examines the manner in which the Maid's image was affected both negatively and positively by adherents of the French Revolution. It provides a discussion of a seminal play devoted to Joan of Arc by the German romantic poet Friedrich Schiller. Born of outrage against Voltaire's poem, Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans gave birth to a new vision of the Maid as a warrior maiden turned martyr that influenced a generation of French artists and authors in its wake. Pyotr Il'ych Tchaikovsky explained why he followed Schiller's fictional rendering rather than an historic account of the Maid's life, arguing that the German romantic tragedy offered a uniquely compelling rendering of her life story.
