Gaston Bachelard’s fragments d’une poétique du feu. Three mythical figures

Abstract

Gaston Bachelard’s last book (or, rather, notes from 1961–1962, edited and published by Suzanne Bachelard, more than twenty years after they were written) presents analyses of three mythical figures: Prometheus, Phoenix, and Empedocles. The Promethean myth and the myth of Empedocles’s death were earlier addressed in Bachelard’s previous works. In Fragments d’une poétique du feu, he extends and supplements his earlier analyses. The article examines the interpretations of selected myths in Fragments… in the context of the evolution of Bachelard’s philosophy and his key inspirations. It also addresses the following questions: 1) what is myth in Bachelard’s late work? 2) which of his main inspirations (psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, phenomenology) are still strongly visible in his late research?