An Analysis of Bernanos' Style in La Joie
Of the many articles written about Bernanos’s literary works, nine have had as their subject a review of La Joie. These reviews concern themselves with the portrayal of character and with the development of the plot, emphasizing in particular the fact that Bernanos stresses one theme, holiness in the midst of a world of sin. None of the critics has made a detailed study of any special feature of the author's style. Casual references have been made regarding the language and the use of words. Donat O’Donnell, for example, has made the following statement pertinent to the vocabulary: "His fantastic eloquence, his successive gales of wild images, his dramatic enormities and frenzied caricatures, are intended, not so much to express anything as o rip usual words off the truth, to blow away the accepted and habitual ways of thinking which shelter people from such a vision as his." The present study is a systematic attempt to present an account of Bernanos’ style in La Joie by a careful analysis of the outstanding characteris­tics which make up his peculiar art of writing. For the present purpose, many quotations have been taken from the text. The method of indicating these quotations may need clarification. The number of the page and the number of the line in parenthesis follow the quotation and are not given in the foot­notes. The text which has been followed consistently is La Joie, by George Bernanos, published by Librairie Plon in Paris in 1929.
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