L’ontologie phénoménologique de la fiction. Ricœur lecteur de Bachelard

Abstract

In this paper, we present the importance of Gaston Bachelard in the elaboration of a phenomenological ontology of fiction in Paul Ricœur’s Lectures on Imagination (1975). Ricœur drew heavily on the concept of novelty in Bachelard’s Poetics, according to which the experience of the new is related to the productivity of the imagination. Indeed, Bachelard devotes ontological aspects to the productive imagination. However, Ricœur is critical of Bachelard’s distinction between the acts of speaking and analyzing. But this criticism indirectly influences Ricœur, as it gives him the concern to seek a continuity between science and poetry, which his ontology of fiction realizes in the similarity between metaphor and model.