Angus J. The Song of Joan of Arc is the only popular piece written about Joan in her lifetime. The author, Christine de Pisan, was a professional writer at the Court of Charles VI of France , an unusual occupation for a woman at that time. Her father, Tommaso, became Charles V's court physician and astrologer in , just after she was born, and she came to France when she was three.
Perhaps because her father belonged to the humanist tradition, he insisted on educating her a new development in educational thought , over the objections of her mother, who thought girls had no need of education. Christine married Etienne de Castel, a nobleman, around Her happy marriage ended when Etienne died suddenly in , leaving her a widow with small children. Her father had first lost favor at court and then died around Faced with financial ruin, Christine turned to her pen to support her household, with felicitous results.
She was appointed the official biographer of Charles V and became the first official female court historian her grandson Jean de Castel was later an official court historian himself , and wrote histories, manuals of warfare, romances, and treatises in poetry and prose, as well as many poems.
Equally important, she was one of the first defenders of women's reputations against a tradition that portrayed women as vice-ridden, fickle, vicious, foul, and disgusting, and which urged men not to marry. In women's defence, Christine wrote several works examining the position society assigned women and arguing that women were of equal moral and social worth as men and that women were capable of all that men could do, although God ordained for them a more restricted although still valuable social role.
Christine had written about Amazons and other women of unusual attainments, as well as women of heroic sanctity, so Joan was a natural subject for her. In , Christine retired to the monastery of Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. All her works, except the "Song," predate her retirement. A word of caution about the translation. Christine used an octosyllabic line I've used a four-stress English line and a rather rigid rhyme scheme ababbcbc.
