Research Catalog

Bernanos : his political thought and prophecy / Thomas Molnar ; with a new introduction by the author.

Title
Bernanos : his political thought and prophecy / Thomas Molnar ; with a new introduction by the author.
Author
Molnar, Thomas Steven, 1921-2010
Publication
New Brunswick (U.S.A.) : Transaction Publishers, 1997.

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TextRequest in advance PQ2603.E5875 Z75 1997xOff-site

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Details

Description
xxxvii, 202 p.; 23 cm.
Summary
Thomas Molnar's Benannos is an illuminating study of the personal evolution of the French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos from a reactionary royalist to a religiously principled anti-fascist. it also provides a detailed account of the intellectual divisions within the French Catholic Right and suggests a number of parallels with intellectual and literary figures on the secular and religious left, including Zola, Peguy, and Simone Weil. But, as Molnar points out, the significance of Bernanos is not exhausted by his writings. Bernanosthe man is as deserving of attention as is Bernanos the novelist, essayist, and social critic. Molnar shows Bernanos against the troubled political-religious background of modern France: the Dreyfus case, the disillusionment following World War I, the Franco regime, Vichy, and the beginnings of the cold war. Whatever touched France touched Bernanos, and he flung himself into each crisis, not armed with a political system nor an academically sanctioned philosophy, but with a peasant's respect for what is and a Christian's sense of what might be. The portrait that Molnar draws is that of a passionately concerned Christian who knows that truth is hard to come by, but who is ready to follow it wherever it leads, regardless of the consequences. A crucial theme covered by Molnar is Bernanos's long and conflicted relations with Charles Maurras and the Action Française. he makes clear the extent to which Bernanos's fervent Catholicism set him apart from Maurras whose positivistic inspiration and passion for order helped lay the groundwork for the political collapse that led to the Vichy regime. Thomas Molnar's book is a fascinating account of Georges Bernanos's stature as both a political thinker and an important novelist. Bernanos will be enjoyed by historians, political scientists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of literature. -- from back cover.
Subject
  • Bernanos, Georges, 1888-1948 > Political and social views
  • Action française
  • Conservatism > France > History > 20th century
  • France > Politics and government > 1870-1940
  • France > Politics and government > 1940-1945
Genre/Form
History
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
"Treason of the bourgeoisie" -- "Everything is a question of elites" -- "The new treason" -- "The silent tomorrow" -- Vichy: "A ballet danced in a graveyard" -- "My country is the conscience of Europe" -- "A touchstone of Christianity".
ISBN
1560009322 (paper : alk. paper)
LCCN
^^^96017937^
OCLC
35159142
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library