The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos

The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos

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<p>In this, his last significant work, an admired French philosopher provides extraordinary meditations on the relations between the imagining consciousness and the world, positing the notion of <i>reverie</i> as its most dynamic point of reference. In his earlier book, <i>The Poetics of Space, </i>Bachelard considered several kinds of "praiseworthy space" conducive to the flow of poetic imagery. In <i>Poetics of Reverie </i>he considers the absolute origins of that imagery: language, sexuality, childhood, the Cartesian ego, and the universe. Approaching the psychology of wonder from the phenomenological viewpoint, Bachelard demonstrates the aurgentative <i>potential </i>of all that awareness. Thus he distinguishes what is merely a phenomenon of relaxation from the kind of reverie which "poetry puts on the right track, the track of expanding consciousness"</p>