Recent scholarship has brought up a new approach to literary studies that deals with the unprecedented challenges facing culture and civilization. These challenges were initiated by the revolution of cognitive science and the accompanying advent of the posthuman era, which demanded new perspectives ...
Recent scholarship has brought up a new approach to literary studies that deals with the unprecedented challenges facing culture and civilization. These challenges were initiated by the revolution of cognitive science and the accompanying advent of the posthuman era, which demanded new perspectives of human beings and their world through literary researches. With this revolutionary change in mind, this dissertation tries to reconceptualize imagination by unifying the theoretical works on imagination of Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan. Throughout Western history, the concept of imagination have been evolved from the ancient, as in the book of Genesis, to contemporary times. The theoretical investigation of the imagination has been conducted across a range of fields including philosophy, science and literature.
Although many attempts have been made to systematize the concept of imagination, it has been largely neglected or misunderstood in general because of both the range of its application and the complexity of its formations. It can be said this was the case until Sigmund Freud introduced the dynamics of the unconscious and Bachelard shed light on the importance of poetics and imagination.
Previous studies on imagination have been done separately from the perspectives of psychoanalysis and literature. However, I integrate two divergent approaches on imagination: the literary view of Bachelard and the psychoanalytic view of Lacan. On the one hand the two approaches seem to take different directions; Bachelard tries to find the mechanism and methodology of human imagination by emphasizing the ambiguity and polysemy of literary language and image whereas Lacan pursues to realize the scientification of psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, despite this disparity in their respective conceptualization, I argue that both of them are mutually inclusive to the full understanding of imagination.
Even though very little studies have been done on the interrelationship of the theories of Bachelard and Lacan, there are a few scholars who are interested in finding some common ground between them. Taking into account Tom Eyers’s pioneering research on the subject, this dissertation aims to gain a new insight into the concept of imagination, investigating both distinctness and commonness between Bachelard and Lacan. In a sense that the unconscious has been considered as the source of human imagination, this dissertation is devoted to explicating the theories of Bachelard and Lacan upon the common ground of psychoanalytic perspective. Lacan who returns to Freud with an emphasis on linguistic and mathematical formalization particularly provides a possibility of getting access to the Real by way of the function of the Imaginary. After outlining the complementary relationship of Bachelardian theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis in the discussion of the function of imagination this thesis also attempts to analyze some literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe from the viewpoint of imagination.
For the gradual development of the argument, chapter Ⅱ examines Bachelard’s theory of imagination, particularly his concept of poetic reverie. It is important to note that Bachelard makes significant contributions in the fields of French epistemology at first and then shifts to a theory of imagination, especially centering on literary images. According to Bachelard, since literary expression itself is autonomous, literary imagination is by no means a mere reproduction of perception. Through literary imagination, one can broaden the horizon of imaginative thinking, consequently experiencing the creation of language and original psychic vitality. Furthermore, Bachelard argues that psychoanalysis would be one method to find special literary images that touch the depths of the human soul.
Chapter Ⅲ scrutinizes Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, especially the concept of the Real. Lacan introduces three psychoanalytic orders: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. He expounds that as we, human beings, enter the Symbolic Order, we are inescapably subjugated to the socioeconomic structure, being taken away from the imaginary satisfaction that is the primal pleasure given by mother-infant attachment during the pre-oedipal phase. Since then, human beings have ceaselessly tried to recover their lost primal satisfaction but there has been always an unbridgeable gap between reality and the primal image. At this juncture, this dissertation expostulates how this gap is bridged with Lacan’s related concept of fantasy, highlighting its significance as a paradoxical, dynamic mental-process.
In chapter Ⅳ, in order to illuminate the conjunction between Bachelardian and Lacanian approaches to the imagination, this dissertation firstly explores the precedent research related to the subject, especially that of Eyers. He suggests highly original and useful resource of the conjunction. However, Eyers’s thesis, while elegant, does not deal with Bachelard’s later study on imagination. Therefore, my study aims to advance the related research one step further by making sure that there is certainly a meaningful conjunction between the theories of Bachelard and Lacan. Most importantly, under the theme of literary imagination there is a distinct possibility to postulate the Bachelardian imagination as a way of traversing Lacanian fantasy and encountering the moment of the Real by conjoining Bachelard’s theory of imagination within a poststructural-psychoanalytic context.
Chapter Ⅴ delves deeper into the significant moments that help the readership to exert their faculty of imagination by analyzing some of 19th century British and American literary works, such as: Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, “The Yellow Face”; Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Poe’s three sea narratives, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” and “A Descent in the Maelström.” These works contain abundant and kaleidoscopic literary images that blur the boundary and limitation of language. By analyzing these literary texts from the perspectives of Bachelard and Lacan, this thesis investigates how they help to broaden the horizon of human imagination and at the same time embody the working of imagination in their literary thematic formation.
In conclusion, this dissertation makes a strong argument for the conjoining nature of Bachelardian theory of imagination and Lacanian concept of the Real in the scholarship of literary imagination. Moreover, I maintain that the investigation of both the conjunction and the disjunction between the Lacanian Real and Bachelardian imagination offers a new methodological and epistemological paradigm to see the relationship between human imagination and human lives in the symbolic world where the faculty of imagination is absolutely more essential to meeting the growing demand of this postmodern, global environment. Furthermore, by applying the theories of Bachelard and Lacan to the analysis of literary works, this dissertation opens up a new interpretation of the literary texts and proves how literary imagination broadens and cultivates the minds of people in a positive way within the 21st century sociocultural milieu.
Recent scholarship has brought up a new approach to literary studies that deals with the unprecedented challenges facing culture and civilization. These challenges were initiated by the revolution of cognitive science and the accompanying advent of the posthuman era, which demanded new perspectives of human beings and their world through literary researches. With this revolutionary change in mind, this dissertation tries to reconceptualize imagination by unifying the theoretical works on imagination of Gaston Bachelard and Jacques Lacan. Throughout Western history, the concept of imagination have been evolved from the ancient, as in the book of Genesis, to contemporary times. The theoretical investigation of the imagination has been conducted across a range of fields including philosophy, science and literature.
Although many attempts have been made to systematize the concept of imagination, it has been largely neglected or misunderstood in general because of both the range of its application and the complexity of its formations. It can be said this was the case until Sigmund Freud introduced the dynamics of the unconscious and Bachelard shed light on the importance of poetics and imagination.
Previous studies on imagination have been done separately from the perspectives of psychoanalysis and literature. However, I integrate two divergent approaches on imagination: the literary view of Bachelard and the psychoanalytic view of Lacan. On the one hand the two approaches seem to take different directions; Bachelard tries to find the mechanism and methodology of human imagination by emphasizing the ambiguity and polysemy of literary language and image whereas Lacan pursues to realize the scientification of psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, despite this disparity in their respective conceptualization, I argue that both of them are mutually inclusive to the full understanding of imagination.
Even though very little studies have been done on the interrelationship of the theories of Bachelard and Lacan, there are a few scholars who are interested in finding some common ground between them. Taking into account Tom Eyers’s pioneering research on the subject, this dissertation aims to gain a new insight into the concept of imagination, investigating both distinctness and commonness between Bachelard and Lacan. In a sense that the unconscious has been considered as the source of human imagination, this dissertation is devoted to explicating the theories of Bachelard and Lacan upon the common ground of psychoanalytic perspective. Lacan who returns to Freud with an emphasis on linguistic and mathematical formalization particularly provides a possibility of getting access to the Real by way of the function of the Imaginary. After outlining the complementary relationship of Bachelardian theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis in the discussion of the function of imagination this thesis also attempts to analyze some literary works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Edgar Allan Poe from the viewpoint of imagination.
For the gradual development of the argument, chapter Ⅱ examines Bachelard’s theory of imagination, particularly his concept of poetic reverie. It is important to note that Bachelard makes significant contributions in the fields of French epistemology at first and then shifts to a theory of imagination, especially centering on literary images. According to Bachelard, since literary expression itself is autonomous, literary imagination is by no means a mere reproduction of perception. Through literary imagination, one can broaden the horizon of imaginative thinking, consequently experiencing the creation of language and original psychic vitality. Furthermore, Bachelard argues that psychoanalysis would be one method to find special literary images that touch the depths of the human soul.
Chapter Ⅲ scrutinizes Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, especially the concept of the Real. Lacan introduces three psychoanalytic orders: the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real. He expounds that as we, human beings, enter the Symbolic Order, we are inescapably subjugated to the socioeconomic structure, being taken away from the imaginary satisfaction that is the primal pleasure given by mother-infant attachment during the pre-oedipal phase. Since then, human beings have ceaselessly tried to recover their lost primal satisfaction but there has been always an unbridgeable gap between reality and the primal image. At this juncture, this dissertation expostulates how this gap is bridged with Lacan’s related concept of fantasy, highlighting its significance as a paradoxical, dynamic mental-process.
In chapter Ⅳ, in order to illuminate the conjunction between Bachelardian and Lacanian approaches to the imagination, this dissertation firstly explores the precedent research related to the subject, especially that of Eyers. He suggests highly original and useful resource of the conjunction. However, Eyers’s thesis, while elegant, does not deal with Bachelard’s later study on imagination. Therefore, my study aims to advance the related research one step further by making sure that there is certainly a meaningful conjunction between the theories of Bachelard and Lacan. Most importantly, under the theme of literary imagination there is a distinct possibility to postulate the Bachelardian imagination as a way of traversing Lacanian fantasy and encountering the moment of the Real by conjoining Bachelard’s theory of imagination within a poststructural-psychoanalytic context.
Chapter Ⅴ delves deeper into the significant moments that help the readership to exert their faculty of imagination by analyzing some of 19th century British and American literary works, such as: Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, “The Yellow Face”; Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Poe’s three sea narratives, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” and “A Descent in the Maelström.” These works contain abundant and kaleidoscopic literary images that blur the boundary and limitation of language. By analyzing these literary texts from the perspectives of Bachelard and Lacan, this thesis investigates how they help to broaden the horizon of human imagination and at the same time embody the working of imagination in their literary thematic formation.
In conclusion, this dissertation makes a strong argument for the conjoining nature of Bachelardian theory of imagination and Lacanian concept of the Real in the scholarship of literary imagination. Moreover, I maintain that the investigation of both the conjunction and the disjunction between the Lacanian Real and Bachelardian imagination offers a new methodological and epistemological paradigm to see the relationship between human imagination and human lives in the symbolic world where the faculty of imagination is absolutely more essential to meeting the growing demand of this postmodern, global environment. Furthermore, by applying the theories of Bachelard and Lacan to the analysis of literary works, this dissertation opens up a new interpretation of the literary texts and proves how literary imagination broadens and cultivates the minds of people in a positive way within the 21st century sociocultural milieu.
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