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Bernanos, Georges
(Author)
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A novelist and essayist, Georges Bernanos was interested in the struggle between good and evil within saintly individuals. He was born in Paris in 1888. He studied at the Sorbonne where he received a degree in law and in literature in 1909. He served in the military from 1909 to 1910 and again during World War I. After the war, Bernanos worked as an inspector for an insurance company.
Bernanos's first major success as a writer came in 1926 with the publication of the novel Under the Sun of Satan. His well-known work The Diary of a Country Priest followed in 1936. Both novels traced the unknowing submission of characters, after some early disappointing experience, to the forces of Satan and the subsequent destruction of their moral selves.
From 1930 to 1932, Bernanos wrote for Le Figaro. In his articles and essays, Bernanos pleaded for a renewed spirituality in France and a renewed moral integrity. Mouchette, a short novel set in a bleak village untouched by the twentieth century was published in 1937. As was The Diary of a Country Priest, Mouchette was made into a film by Robert Bresson.
The writings of Georges Bernanos are concerned with the struggle between pride and innocence that lies within every individual. They treat spiritual concerns and the mystery of Christianity. Bernanos is considered among the most original of Roman Catholic novelists.
Bernanos died of cancer in Paris on July 5, 1948.
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