Introduction Summary and Analysis

Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher and the prolific author of "The Poetics of Space", lived from 1884 to 1962 and is considered one of the leading philosophers of Europe. He spends a majority of his career as a scientist, then begins reflecting on literature and poetry and using imagination to explore a reality that is not subject to reasoning, recognizing his acquired knowledge in science is inadequate to understand the poetic imagination.

A philosopher who learns to think by following rationalist methods of science and habits of research is ill-equipped to study the poetic imagination. The poetic image may suddenly appear — a novel idea to the individual. The poetic act seems to be of its own making, without a past to which the tools of philosophical reflection can be applied over time. Bachelard studies the beingness, or ontology, of the poetic image that...