The Song of Joan of Arc

sneak peek of a translation-in-progress!

Here’s a great little literary gem: Christine de Pizan, the first woman to publish a political treatise, was also the first person to publish a St. Joan of Arc poem! Christine was a contemporary of Joan and a friend of Charles VII’s mother, so she watched the whole drama of Joan of Arc unfold. And she wrote about it, in an embullient poem of more than 160 8-line rhyming stanzas.

I’m working on translating the poem with a friend, and it’s been a delightful little project. The poem, called “Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc,” is intriguing for a number of reasons, but the thing that most attracted me to it is that it is simultaneously a poem of politics and a poem of joy.