Page 58 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes Unit 5: Is There a Text in This Class—
Introduction to Stanley Fish

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
5.1 An Overview
5.2 Biographical Information
5.3 Major Works
5.4 Criticisms of Stanley’s Work
5.5 Summary
5.6 Key-Words
5.7 Review Questions
5.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Know about Stanley Fish.
• Discuss major works of Stanley Fish.
• Understand Criticisms of Stanley’s Work.

Introduction
Stanley Fish is one of America's most stimulating literary theorists. In this book, he undertakes a
profound reexamination of some of criticism's most basic assumptions. He penetrates to the core
of the modern debate about interpretation, explodes numerous misleading formulations, and
offers a stunning proposal for a new way of thinking about the way we read.
Fish begins by examining the relation between a reader and a text, arguing against the formalist
belief that the text alone is the basic, knowable, neutral, and unchanging component of literary
experience. But in arguing for the right of the reader to interpret and in effect create the literary
work, he skillfully avoids the old trap of subjectivity. To claim that each reader essentially
participates in the making of a poem or novel is not, he shows, an invitation to unchecked
subjectivity and to the endless proliferation of competing interpretations. For each reader approaches
a literary work not as an isolated individual but as part of a community of readers. 'Indeed," he
writes, "it is interpretive communities, rather than either the text or reader, that produce meanings."

5.1 An Overview

A provocative literary theorist and intellectual gadfly, Stanley Fish has earned distinction for his
investigations into the subjectivity of textual interpretation, specifically his explication of the
concept of an "interpretive community." While in the first major portion of his publishing career
Fish explored the role of the reader in determining the meaning of a text (as seen through the lens
of seventeenth-century English literature), he later applied his particular brand of literary theory
to legal studies. He has also critiqued the work of his own colleagues, questioning the tendency of
academics in English literature to politicize their writings. Fish is known, if not always appreciated,
by his peers for his controversial stances.

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