DREAMING ACCIDENTALLY OF PINTER,HAROLD - THE INTERPLAY OF METAPHOR AND METONYMY IN DREAMS

The paper examines a personal dream that offers a coalescence of dream, waking, and fictional experience. Essentially, the dream is used as an occasion for discussing the role of metaphor and metonymy in the production of orderly dream narratives, or meaningful dreams (Meaning and formal organization are considered as virtually coterminous terms). The paper proposes that metaphor can only occur, in and out of dreams, by virtue of subjacent metonymic chains, or networks that are composed of partly resemblant contents, and that secondary day residue, in some cases, may get into dreams on the coattails of metonymic association with a primary image. It is suggested that dreams may create meaning rather than arising from meanings that are already in place as part of the dream thought, and that any meanings dreams may have are dependent on the prevailing emotion or attitude of the dreamer during the dream itself. The relation of the dream process to surrealistic imagery is examined.