Page 65 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Gowher Ahmad Naik, Lovely Professional University Unit 6: Is There a Text In This Class—Stanley Fish: Analysis

Unit 6: Is There a Text In This Class—Stanley Fish: Analysis Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
6.1 Literature in the Reader
6.2 Theory of Stanley Fish
6.3 Stanley Fish: Is There a Text In This Class
6.4 Critical Appreciation
6.5 Summary
6.6 Key-Words
6.7 Review Questions
6.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Discuss Theory of Stanley Fish.
• Understand Stanley’s ‘is There Text in This Class’.

Introduction

Stanley Eugene Fish is one of the chief proponents of a school of literary criticism known asreader
response criticism. In fact, the school of reader response critics has even been referred to as the
"School of Fish". As the name might suggest, reader response criticism emphasizes the role of the
reader as crucial in determining the significance of a text. To a critic of this type, reading is seen
as an activity which makesmeaning in a text rather than a passive function which derivesmeaning
from a text. In his book Is There a Text in This Class?, Fish has collected a number of his most
important essays and articles in an attempt to chart the progress of his evolving interpretive
method.
The book is developmental, not static. Fish at all times reveals the evolutionary aspect of his
work—the manner in which he has assumed new positions, altered them, and then moved on.
Previously published essays are introduced by headnotes which relate them to the central notion of
interpretive communities as it emerges in the final chapters. In the course of refining his theory, Fish
includes rather than excludes the thinking of other critics and shows how often they agree with him,
even when he and they may appear to be most dramatically at odds. Engaging, lucid, provocative,
this book will immediately find its place among the seminal works of modern literary criticism.

6.1 Literature in the Reader

In the essay "Literature in the Reader," Fish stresses the temporal nature of the reading experience
as opposed to the spatial one proposed by other critics: ". . . it [the opposing school] transforms a
temporal experience into a spatial one; it steps back and in a single glance takes in a whole
(sentence, page, work) which the reader knows (if at all) only bit by bit, moment by moment". Fish
finds the meaning of the work to reside in this bit by bit knowing, the experience that an "informed
reader" has as he reads, rather than from anything imbedded in the actual text. In other words, the
process of enchantment/disenchantment occurs continuously throughout the reading experience.

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