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404Philosophy and Literature The collection also includes essays which undertake critique ofspecific ideas held by Dewey. In "Aristode and Dewey on the Rat Race"John Lachs takes up Dewey's notion that we ought to aim at reconstructing social practices according to the model of means-end integrated actions. Such actions are those in which not only ends but the means which lead to them are valued on their own account. Although Lachs finds warrant for this social ideal in experience—he cites love and play as actions which meet the said description —he argues that the broad range of application which Dewey claims for it is unfounded. Pragmatic considerations and appraisals of the other main schools of thought populating the contemporary philosophical landscape are scattered throughout the essays. Analytic philosophy, critical theory à la Habermas, neopragmatism, phenomenology and existentialism, as well as deconstruction receive examination in one form or another from pragmatic perspectives. Especially noteworthy in this regard are extended critiques of Richard Rorty (in essays by Thomas M. Alexander and Larry A. Hickman) and Martin Heidegger (in a piece by R. W. Sleeper) . Lastly, several of the essays endeavor to extend the pragmatist project into new fields. Charlene Haddock Seigfried's "Validating Women's Experiences Pragmatically" appraises some of the promises and limitations of Dewey's thought for feminism, and Bruce Wilshire's "Body-Mind and Subconsciousness " develops some of Dewey's psychological theses and points out their implications for theory and practice in education and ecology. A final word is in order about the book's title, Philosophy and the Reconstruction ofCulture. The word "culture" here should not be interpreted too narrowly, as Dewey understood it to cover the vast range of human experience, from the logical and scientific to the moral and artistic. That the book's editor has been true to this Deweyan sense of "culture" is attested to by the large scope of the essays he has assembled; this fine collection has something in it of value for anyone interested in pragmatism. Arkansas Tech UniversityJeff Mitchell The Dream and the Text, edited by Carol Schreier Rupprecht; xxii & 325 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, $19.95. In her introductory essay, written with Kelly Bulkley, Rupprecht speaks of '"oneirocriticism,'" or "dreaming yourself to sleep," as the "core process of this book" (p. 1). Though this critical process reflects our preoccupation with Reviews405 psychoanalytically interpreting dreams, the interest is very old, crossing cultural boundaries. She has selected fourteen essays to define oneirocriticism as "a return [my emphasis] of respect for the multifarious implications of dreams, both 'real' and 'literary,' in and of themselves" (p. 2). The first section—"Foregrounding Theory"—contains essays "inventively theoretical, drawing on but also playing with earlier views of psychologists and literary critics" (p. 11). While the selected essays do set forth theories treating the literary dream—ostensibly the subject of this work—it would be interesting if this "play" also interpreted recent literary expressions of dreams. For, while the subjects of literature and dreams are timeless, their representations, like critical approaches, change. We might learn more about the theory ifLockwood's nightmare or Posthumus's dream were reenvisioned in D. M. Thomas's vision of Purgatory in The White Hotel, in Jamaica Kincaid's characterization of Annie John's dreams prompted bywishing her mother's death, or Tiffauges's "phoric" redemption in Tournier's The Ogre. Certainly the critical thought is there: Bert O. States sees the simile as a literary device suggesting "resemblance" between images, while metaphor serves the dream where "images would not be held apart by a like but would be fused as one" (p. 20); Jane White-Lewis sets forth the following comparison: "Like our own nightmares, a literary nightmare may prove unforgettable and become part of our imaginai life" (p. 48) . The three sections that follow move among the tensions created by fusing literary and psychological approaches to the literary dream. An essay in Part II juxtaposes current and historical psychological interpretations as suggested by its title, "Talmudic Dream Interpretation, Freudian Ambivalence, Deconstruction ." The following section deals with texts by three writers—the author of Gilgamesh, Shakespeare, and Henry James—a range which further suggests...

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