Gaston Bachelard's Philosophy of Imagination: An Introduction

Bachelard’s works on imagination have been used primarily by literary critics interested in the archetypal imagery of writers. His treatment of the imagination of matter has led to a method of classifying poets according to their favorite substances, based on a view of Bachelard as a “psychoanalyst” of the elements. But the phenomena of imagination, the images themselves, are not his fundamental concern. Bachelard’s physics and chemistry of imagination also imply a metaphysics. Definition of the contents and function of imagination illustrating a philosophy of imagination in itself is the purpose of the present essay.