Special Issue of American Literary Realism dedicated to Twain’s Joan of Arc

Illustration from Harper’s Weekly, currently located in the Louis J. Budd Collection of the CMTS Mark Twain Archive

The Center for Mark Twain Studies is pleased to announce the publication of a special issue of American Literary Realism (Winter 2019, Vol. 51, No. 2) dealing with Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/39501). It originated from the workshop on Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc chaired by Paula Harrington at Elmira 2017: The Eighth International Conference of the Center for Mark Twain Studies, which was part of the France-Berkeley-Fund project headed by Linda Morris and Ronald Jenn (“The ‘French Marginalia’ of Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1895-96) at Berkeley: Patriotism without Borders”). The issue, coordinated by Ronald Jenn and Delphine Louis-Dimitrov, contains contributions by Linda A. Morris (“What is ‘Personal’ about: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc?”), Jeanne Campbell Reesman (“Discourses of Faith vs. Fraud in Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and Christian Science”, Susan K. Harris (“Whohoo!!! Joan of Arc!!!!!”), Geoffrey C. Williams (“What Joan of Arc can Teach Us about Human Motivation and Well-being”) and Delphine Louis-Dimitrov (“The Democratic Reconfiguration of History in Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”). In true Twainian fashion, a twin special issue on “Joan of Arc through American Eyes / Jeanne d’Arc au Prisme de l’Amérique ” will be published in the RFEA (Revue Française d’Etudes Américaines) in Fall 2019. It will set Twain’s passion for Joan of Arc in a broader context by considering various aspects of her presence in American literature and culture.

Stemming from this work, Mark Twain et Jeanne d’Arc: L’hisoire d’une passion, a French-language short documentary about Twain’s lifelong interest in the iconic heroine, Joan of Arc, was recently awarded the top prize in the documentary category at the Anstia Film Festival in Paris. The film, written by recent Quarry Farm Fellow, Ronald Jenn, and directed by Patrice Thery, uses pictures and documents from French and American archives, including our own, to familiarize its audience with the author, the subject of his passionate interest, and, finally, the novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, which he published in 1896. The film can be seen here.