On Poetic Imagination and Reverie

Book excerpt: Selected, translated, and introduced by Colette Gaudin. Gaston Bachelard was considered one of the great minds of our times. His prodigious ability, displayed in twenty-three books and expressed in subtle, suggestive prose, has produced the single most important body of thought in the recovery of imagination in the twentieth century. These passages 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 and on Bachelard, together provide a concise introduction and brilliantly capture Bachelard's genius. --Spring Publications.