| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Bernanos, Georges |
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(zhôrzh b rnän s´) (KEY) , 1888–1948, French novelist and polemicist. Profoundly Catholic, Bernanos attacked modern materialism and advocated a moral and ethical order based on the teachings of the Church. His novels The Star of Satan (1926, tr. 1940) and The Diary of a Country Priest (1936, tr. 1937) are powerful accounts of intense spiritual struggle and reflect his mysticism. Dialogue des Carmelites (1949) was adapted for the stage in 1952. A believer in monarchy, Bernanos was active in Royalist causes until the Spanish civil war. In 1938, after the Munich pact, which he considered a shameful instance of appeasement, he settled in Brazil and remained there until 1945. His political writings include Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune (1938, tr. A Diary of My Times, 1938), indicting Franco’s policies in the Spanish civil war, and Lettre aux Anglais (1942, tr. Plea for Liberty, 1944). | 1 | | See studies by T. S. Molnar (1960), G. R. Blumenthal (1965), P. Hebblewaite (1965), W. S. Bush (1969), and R. Speaight (1974). | 2 |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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