Gaston Bachelard's Material Imagination Theory

Gaston Bachelard(1884-1962)is a famous modern French philosopher, literary critic and poet. His theory of material imagination had ever had a great influence on development of literary critic of France, even that of western Europe. However, till this time, there still has little introduction about his theory in our country. The most distinctive characteristic of Bachelard's theory is that he associates free imagination with fire, water, air and earth, the four basic elements that were taken to be consisting of the world by the western people. Bachelard holds that poets' surreal imagination comes from people's original psychological intention towards certain element, and he names these intetion "complexes". Moreover, he examines some surreal peoms in terms of the mode of complex and finds that the psychological intention towards certain element is the point that makes the inner coherence of these poems. This dissertation chooses the fire element as an example to illustrate Bachelard's theory of material imagination, that is his explaining mode of "complex". On the base of that, this dissertation will try to put Bachelard's mode into the explanation of surreal imagination of "fire" element in Luxun's prose poem "Wild Grass". I hope that this dissertation could provide a new perspective for the comprehension of Chinese poetry.