Joan of Arc has long piqued the historical imagination, for it seems impossible that a peasant-maid could have led the French army, crowned her king, and then been burned as a heretic, only later to be found a saint. This volume of essays employs tools of historical analysis, literary criticism, and feminist inquiry to reveal why veterans of her military campaigns found her to have been a remarkable commander; why so many of her contemporaries, churchman and poets alike, found it possible to accept the validity of her mission and her voices; why modern politicians and artists have used her as a symbol; and why the Catholic Church finally decided to canonize her in 1920.