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Talk:Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

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de Conte not fictional?[edit]

Louis de Conte doesn't seem to be entirely fictional. Ronald Gower's Joan of Arc at Project Gutenberg mentions Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Contes, several times. Mark Twain actually cites one of these in a footnote. --Reuben 19:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

>>>> The sieur Louis de Conte is actually a fictionalization of Loius dee COnte, Joan of Arc's actual page. 24.149.51.258

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 13:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"There is a distinct lack of humor, so prevalent in his other works."

I would guess that the person who wrote this has not actually read the book. Few have these days, perhaps. There are, in fact, numerous humorous passages, usually provided by the comic character called the Paladin, who would be at home in Huckleberry Finn. —Kevin Myers 13:02, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely agree. I'm reading it now, and there's a fair bit of Twainian humor in it. It's generally subtler than much of the knee-slappery of his earlier works, but it is certainly there. 72.220.174.167 (talk) 03:28, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The remarks by many reviewers about the lack humor, I believe, is more a matter of in comparison to Twain's other works. He included a good deal of humor in this work, but some early reviews of the work kept saying "This can't be Twain! It's too serious to be Twain!".

Some of Twain's humor was so subtle as to almost be underground. He took Joan's page who served her at the raising of the siege of Orleans, Louis de Coute (IIRC), fictionalized him into Sieur Louis de Conte to (1) allow a narrator to be able to describe the three different phases of her life (as a young person, as a soldier, and as a martyr), and (2) to throw some of that subtle humor around. "Conte", as Twain re-spelled the name, means "tale" in English, as it was a tale he was telling, and giving him the noble title of Sieur Louis de Conte left him with the initials of S.L.C., which not so coincidentally was the monogram of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. --- Couillaud 16:34, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

This article notes correctly that 20th century reviewers were far far less kind to this book than 19th century reviewers. But the novel's reputation seems to be recovering in the 21st century, and it is now getting reviewed kindly again. A new section should be added to this article to reflect this. --WickerGuy (talk) 18:54, 4 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]