Book Review
Jan. 30th, 2009 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariPope Joan
by Diana Woolfolk Cross
This novel is a fictional version of the life of the legendary 9th century Pope Joan/Pope John Anglicus. There is plenty of debate about whether or not Pope Joan actually existed, and I'm not going to get into that debate here. Suffice to say that historical theories need not be true in order to make an interesting novel.
And this was a very interesting novel. In it, Pope Joan starts out as a young girl possessed of great intellectual talent and curiosity. Because she eventually comes to feel trapped by the constrictions of her gender and has her intellectual pursuits thwarted by the misogynistic beliefs of the times, Joan disguises herself as a man and ends up entering a monastery in order to pursue learning. Eventually she leaves the monastery, makes her way to Rome, and ends up being elected Pope. Pope Joan is a very unashamedly feminist book, and Joan's inability to accept the confines of the role of women in her time is portrayed as a heroic struggle, and I did indeed find a lot that I admired and empathized with.
This novel is also well-written and well-researched. I did think that Cross leaned a little too much on deus ex machina in the resolution of certain crisis points.
by Diana Woolfolk Cross
This novel is a fictional version of the life of the legendary 9th century Pope Joan/Pope John Anglicus. There is plenty of debate about whether or not Pope Joan actually existed, and I'm not going to get into that debate here. Suffice to say that historical theories need not be true in order to make an interesting novel.
And this was a very interesting novel. In it, Pope Joan starts out as a young girl possessed of great intellectual talent and curiosity. Because she eventually comes to feel trapped by the constrictions of her gender and has her intellectual pursuits thwarted by the misogynistic beliefs of the times, Joan disguises herself as a man and ends up entering a monastery in order to pursue learning. Eventually she leaves the monastery, makes her way to Rome, and ends up being elected Pope. Pope Joan is a very unashamedly feminist book, and Joan's inability to accept the confines of the role of women in her time is portrayed as a heroic struggle, and I did indeed find a lot that I admired and empathized with.
This novel is also well-written and well-researched. I did think that Cross leaned a little too much on deus ex machina in the resolution of certain crisis points.
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Date: 2009-01-31 04:55 pm (UTC)