BOOK NOTICES 271

Metaphor: An Annotated Bibliography and meaning can be recovered only through a

History. By WARREN A. SHIBLBS. renewed sense of responsibility. The "cathe-
Whitewater, WI: The Language Press, kontic theory of education" which he de-
1971. xiv + 414 pages. $12.50. velops applies Niebuhr's root metaphor of
man-the-responder to academic life and ex-
This lithoprinted work consists princi- plores its implications for individual and
pally of an annotated bibliography (pp. 23- institutional commitments.
318), with a brief introduction (pp. 1-21) Holmes contends that it is possible to
and three indices (an index of principal determine the object of a university's loy-

Downloaded from http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Bath Library & Learning Centre on July 15, 2015
works on metaphor; a general index of alty and to hold it responsible for its deci-
names and topics; and a detailed subject sions. "The responsible university, like the
index on metaphor). responsible self, is that university which
The annotations are uneven: Many en- makes no response without regard for uni-
tries are not annotated at all; others are de- versal community, and the university, like
scribed in some detail. The indices are the self, that appropriates this truth is the
particularly useful. The introduction is one that will recover its lost dimension of
sketchy; the greater part of it comprises a meaning" (101-2). Specifically, this entails
catalogue of interesting ideas related to universities becoming more conscious of
metaphor. and explicit about that to which they are
The title of the work is misleading: the committed, stressing the relationships of
book does not contain a "history." How- subjects taught to each other, demonstrating
ever, the author promises one in a forth- courses' identity-and purpose-import, and
coming work (XIII). cultivating students' R.Q. (Responsibility
For those working seriously on metaphor Quotient) scores.
and related topics, this work is a helpful if Most helpful to me were Holmes's appli-
not indispensable tool. cation of Ogden and Richards's four mean-
ROBERT W. FUNK ings of meaning to the educational process
University of Montana and the discussion of revelation in which
he argues that "meaning emerges as man
answers." Most troubling was his tendency
throughout the book to project Niebuhr's
discussion of the responsible self onto com-
plex institutions of higher education, de-
The Academic Mysteryhouse: The Man, the
manding of corporate institutions the same
Campus, and Their Search for Meaning,
faithful responsibility which is expected
By ROBERT M. HOLMES. New York-
of individuals. Just who a university is, how
Nasbville: Abingdon, 1970. 197 pages. it expresses its responsibility, and how it
$395. can be held accountable for its diverse
In San Jose, California, one can visit the modes of decision-making are not clear, in
"Winchester Mysteryhouse," a grotesque, spite of the author's insistence that the uni-
rambling structure to which the deranged versity, like the shelf, can be helped to a
Mrs. Winchester constantly added new fuller sense of identity and responsibility
rooms without design to confound the de- through self-examination. To exorcise the
mons she believed were haunting the demons which are haunting the academic
house. The author considers the contem- mysteryhouse today will require more than
porary university a similar "monument to prescriptions that institutions "Be respon-
schizophrenia," as he describes the demons sible, like faithful Christians."
of alienation, depersonalization, prolifera-
tion, and irrelevance whicht he believes are HARRY E. SMITH
haunting American higher education and Society of Religion in Higher Education
the unsuccessful attempts to expel them.
New Haven, Connecticut
Drawing heavily upon the later thought
of H. Richard Niebuhr, he argues that