著者

橋爪 恵子

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美學 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.62, no.1, pp.13-24, 2011-06-30

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In The Poetics of Space (1957), Gaston Bachelard adopts a phenomenological approach to the literary image for the first time. In the volume, he introduces the notion of "Retentissements" (echoes)-the creative reception of image-which is given a central role in the work. This paper aims to examine the evolution of his theory, particularly in relation to his epistemology and earlier theory of art. When Bachelard refers to Husserl's phenomenology in his epistemological work, he criticizes it as too "formal." To Bachelard, the examples Husserl gives do not provide a sufficient understanding of the relationship between subject and object in science. In his earlier theory of art, Bachelard also establishes his distance from Sartre's phenomenology, which draws a clear distinction between the reality and the image. For Bachelard, they are intimately interwoven and escape from the fact-imagination opposition. Paradoxically, although he seems hostile toward phenomenologists, his critique eventually leads him toward a new phenomenology of the imagination. In the process of his debate with them, Bachelard appropriates some features of their theories in order to forge his own. In this way, he evolves his theory of the imagination and, in this sense, he is influenced by other phenomenological thought and, in turn, echoes (retentir) them.