Joan of Arc and Richard III loom large in the histories of their countries, but the myths surrounding them have always obscured just who they were and what they hoped to accomplish. In this book, medieval historian Charles Wood brings these fascinating figures to life through an original combination of traditional biography and wide-ranging discussion of the political and social world in which they lived. Wood draws on a range of unusual sources--from art and legal codes to chronicles and lives of saints--to present a new picture of medieval people and their concerns. Focusing on topics often...

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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...

(First published as THE AGE OF CHIVALRY) A lively and insightful interpretation of the Middle Ages.