The Shavian Web: Three Aspects of "Saint Joan"

CONTENTS

1.  Introduction  3

2.  Shaw s Attitude to History  3

3.  Philosophical Tradition Shaping Shaw s Ideas  4

3.1  The Victorian Heritage  4

3.2  The Hegelian Influence  6

4.  Shaw s Adaptations of History  6

4.1  Departures from History  7

4.2  Dramatic Effects  8

5.Questions  Concerning the Genre  10

6.  Joan and the Life Force  11

7.Aesthetic  Considerations  13

8.  Joan s Value for the 20th century  13

9.  Conclusion  14

10.  Bibliography  16

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1 Quoted in J.L. Wisenthal: Shaw’s Sense of History, Oxford, 1989, p. 140.

2 Martin Meisel: Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater, Princeton, 1963, p. 371.

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3 Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces (later referred to as CCP), vol. I, London, 1973, p. 480.

4 Bernard Shaw: Everybody’s Political What’s What, London, 1950, p. 180.

5 See note 1, p. 73.

6 This section is based largely on J.L. Wisenthal’s Shaw’s Sense of History (see note 1), esp. pp. 1-55.

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7 George Orwell: Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. I, London: Secker&Warburg, 1968, p. 119. 8 Shaw, CCP I, p. 193.

9 Ibid, p. 188.

10 William B. Furlong: Shaw and Chesterton – the Metaphysical Jesters, Pennsylvania University Press, 1970, p. 83. 11 William Searle: The Saint and the Skeptics, Detroit, 1976, p. 101.

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