SOURCE: "The Chemistry of Conscience': François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Julien Green," in Twentieth-Century French Literature to World War II, Southern Illinois University Press, 1966, pp. 96-118.

An American educator, critic, and author, Moore is best remembered for his studies of the life and works of D. H. Lawrence, though he also wrote and edited books on John Steinbeck, E. M. Forster, Lawrence Durrell, Rainer Maria Rilke, and other authors. In the following excerpt, Moore surveys Mauriac's body of work and finds that, despite a predilection toward didacticism, it is populated with compelling characters and offers trenchant psychological insights.

Nietzsche's phrase, the chemistry of conscience, might usefully describe the work of François Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, and Julien Green. It is the Catholic conscience, in Mauriac the struggle of sensuality and passion against religion, in Bernanos of greed and lack of reason against the realization of good, in Green...