Review Of Karen Sullivan's The Interrogation Of Joan Of Arc

The written records from Joan of Arc’s trials and subsequent interrogations have long been accepted as the leading authority of the words and beliefs of Joan of Arc’s. Karen Sullivan, a professor of literature at Bard College and writer of numerous articles on medieval French literature, challenges the accuracy of these records noting that it was the educated clerics who decided the line of inquiry, decided when the interrogations would take place, and ultimately decided what to include in these transcripts. Sullivan chose to re-reads these accounts as a literary text to look at how the interpretation of Joan’s words from these clerics could have lead to the death of the Maid of Orleans.
With her book, The Interrogation of Joan of Arc, Karen argues that the educational differences

This entails that she reads the text on its own terms independent from other existing works in order to analyze its contents. However, this approach could be problematic for historians and for individuals who are not familiar with Joan of Arc. I admit I was one of the individuals who first picked up the book expecting it to be another historical account on Joan of Arc when that was not the case. It was a little confusing at times since I have done some background information looking into other sources to get a better idea of Joan of Arc. So when it came to actually reading the book, I wasn’t prepared for, used to, or aware of the literary practice seen in The Interrogation of Joan of Arc until I reached the end. I wasn’t used to the other correlative evidence, which would give further insight on Joan and the clerics, being ignored. So again, when it came to certain parts of the book where Sullivan would continue on to discuss and analyze a detail from one of the interrogations while other sources disputed that detail was a little