Bachelard, Gaston (1884-1962). French philosopher of science and literary critic. Bachelard argued that progress in science had been achieved through a series of radical discontinuities or ‘epistemological breaks’, exemplified notably by the emergence of relativity theory and quantum mechanics (Le Nouvel Esprit scientifique, 1934). Progress also implied the overcoming of tenacious ‘epistemological obstacles’. He therefore proposed a non-reductive ‘psychoanalysis’ (and, later, a ‘phenomenology’) of irrational or mythical beliefs concerning the material world (La Formation de l'esprit scientifique, 1938), only to become fascinated by such ‘rêveries matérielles’ as a form of poetic truth which reveals our archetypal affinity with the four elements (La Psychanalyse du feu, 1938; L'Eau et les rêves, 1942; L'Air et les songes, 1943; La Terre et les rêveries de la volonté, La Terre et les rêveries du repos, 1948). As a scientist Bachelard conceived of matter as energy and vibration; as a reader he responded to images of its dynamism, rhythm, or metamorphosis, and to the sensuous and affective force of fluidity, viscosity, dissolution, or reflection, of flight or repose. Bachelard was less concerned with the structure of literary works than with the vectors of the writer's imagination and their prolongation in the reader; he thus influenced the ‘the matic’ approach of such critics as Georges Poulet and Jean-Pierre Richard. The postulate of discontinuity derived from microphysics informed Bachelard's anti-Bergsonian rehabilitation of the instant in consciousness and time, while his notion of the ‘epistemological break’ was further elaborated by his pupil Michel Foucault.

[Rhiannon Goldthorpe]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.