On Poetic Imagination and Reverie Selections from Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard was considered one of the great minds of our times. His prodigious ability, displayed in twenty-three books & expressed in subtle, suggested prose has produced the single most important body of thought in the recovery of imagination in the twentieth century. Beginning his intellectual career in mathematics, physics & chemistry, he held a chair in the philosophy of science at the Sorbonne. Then he initiated a wholly new method of working with matter, penetrating to its essential core where the discourses of science, psychoanalysis & aesthetics merge. His poetics of Air, Water, Earth, Fire & Space (excerpted in this compendium) have become indispensable for the study of images - in dreams, alchemy, poetry & literature & psychopathology. These passage from his major works, their thematic organization, the authoritative prefaces by Colette Gaudin which place his work in the stream of current ideas, as well as the Bibliography of writings by & on Bachelard, together provide a concise introduction & brilliantly capture Bachelard's genius.Bachelard, Gaston is the author of 'On Poetic Imagination and Reverie Selections from Gaston Bachelard' with ISBN 9780882143316 and ISBN 088214331X.