Jeanne or The Lark

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Data
Title: Jeanne or The Lark
Original title: L'alouette
Genus: Acting in two parts
Original language: French
Author: Jean Anouilh
Publishing year: 1953
Premiere: 1953
Place of premiere: Paris
people
  • Jeanne
  • Cauchon
  • The inquisitor
  • The prosecutor
  • Brother Ladvenu
  • Count Warwick
  • Charles
  • The Queen Yolande
  • The little queen
  • Agnes
  • The Archbishop
  • La Trémouille
  • La Hire
  • Beaudricourt
  • Jeanne's father
  • Jeanne's mother
  • Jeanne's brother
  • The guardian Boudousse
  • The executioner
  • First English soldier
  • Second English soldier
  • The king's page

Jeanne or The Lark (French original title: L'Alouette = the Lark ) is a play by Jean Anouilh .

Emergence

In his most successful creative period - between 1946 and 1959 almost every Paris theater season was opened with a new play by him - Anouilh turned to the French national heroine Jeanne d'Arc in 1953 . Like George Bernard Shaw , Bertolt Brecht and Anna Seghers before, he takes up the material and takes the trial against Joan of Arc as the starting point of his drama. Anouilh lets a burlesque game take its course, which repeatedly shows that you are in the theater. This is achieved above all by staging the story of Johannas as a game within a game, as a kind of flashback.

action

As part of the court hearing, individual stages in Jeanne's life are re-enacted - leaving her parents, meeting Baudricourt, meeting the Dauphin and later King Charles VII. George Bernard Shaw's treatment of the Johanna material (in: “ The holy Johanna ”) Has left clear traces in Anouilh's version, in the selection of the individual scenes as well as their design and the layout of the figures. For example, the judge Cauchon, like Shaw, is basically a kind man who tries to save Jeanne's life, and the figure of the English aristocrat Warwick also reveals clear parallels. In contrast to Shaw's Johanna, Anouilh's Jeanne is not a self-confident, almost unshakable woman, but a very human-looking young girl who is alien to egoism and who discourages martial killing. A remarkable break with the character created in this way is then the revocation of her confession, which Jeanne only makes because she is afraid of aging and slipping into mediocrity. Jeanne is very reminiscent of Antigone, the heroine of Anouilh's play of the same name, whose choice of death is also inherent in her character from the start. The sometimes striking similarities between Jeanne or the Lark and Antigone (the figure Cauchon is also very similar to that of Creon) have earned the younger piece some criticism.

literature

  • Volker Canaris , Jean Anouilh , Velber near Hanover 1968
  • Ulrich Fischer, Progress in the Jeanne d'Arc drama of the 20th century , Frankfurt am Main 1982.
  • S. Bergson John, Anouilh. L'Aloutte and Pauvre Bitos , London 1984.