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Abstract
This article examines the status of irrationality in the novels of Georges Bernanos by proposing a critical shift away from traditional readings, which have predominantly focused on theological, spiritual, or symbolic interpretations. It advances the hypothesis that irrationality in Bernanos does not function as a mere thematic motif or interpretative category, but rather as a structuring poetic and hermeneutic principle that permeates the configuration of reality, the construction of fictional figures, and the reader’s interpretative activity. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework combining philosophy, poetics, and narratology, the study brings together several theoretical approaches to irrationality (Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Otto), in order to show that Bernanos’ work transcends the classical opposition between reason and non-reason. Instead, it establishes a logic of excess, indeterminacy, and semantic destabilization. The analysis highlights three major configurations: irrationality as an excess of the real in the experience of grace, evil as an irreducible form of “numinous” alterity, and a poetics of indeterminacy that structures narrative discourse by suspending interpretative closure. A narratological and stylistic reading then demonstrates that this logic reaches its fullest expression in writing itself, characterized by fragmentation, silences, syntactic discontinuities, and elliptical strategies that generate hermeneutic instability. Irrationality is therefore not represented within the text; it is produced through its formal and enunciative structures. By rethinking Bernanos’ work from this perspective, the article proposes a conception of irrationality as a textual experience and a formal operator of modern writing, opening new perspectives on the relationship between literature, philosophical thought, and the crisis of classical models of rationality.