Stanley Fish
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Stanley Fish (born 1938) is a prominent American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is among the most important critics of the English poet John Milton in the 20th century, and is often associated with post-modernism, at times to his irritation [citation needed]. Currently, he is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College of Law.
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[edit] Academic career
Fish did his undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania [1] and earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1962. He taught English at the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University before becoming Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke University from 1986 to 1998. From 1999 to 2004 he was Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After stepping down as Dean, Fish spent a year teaching in the Department of English. In June of 2005, he accepted the position of Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University, teaching in the FIU College of Law.
[edit] Milton
Stanley Fish started his career as a medievalist. His first book, John Skelton's Poetry, was published by Yale University Press in 1965. Fish reveals in his partly biographical essay, "Milton, Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour" (published in There's No Such Thing as Free Speech... And It's a Good Thing, Too), that he became a Miltonist by accident. In 1963 — the same year that Fish started as an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley — the resident Miltonist, C.A. Patrides, received a grant. The chair of the department asked Fish to teach the Milton course, notwithstanding the fact that the young professor "had never — either as an undergraduate or in graduate school — taken a Milton course" (269). The eventual result of that course was Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967; rpt. 1997). Fish's 2001 book, How Milton Works, reflects five decades worth of his scholarship on Milton.
[edit] Interpretive communities
As a literary theorist, Fish is best known for his analysis of interpretive communities — an offshoot of reader-response criticism. Fish's work in this field examines how the interpretation of a text is dependent upon each reader's own subjective experience in one or more communities, each of which are defined as a 'community' by a distinct epistemology. Although Fish argues that the only possible meaning of a text is what the author intends, he claims that any actual attempt to access this is not possible. Any attempt to determine what exactly the author intended will result in nothing more than an interpretation. based upon the interpretive community of the reader making the interpretation. Fish distinguishes the former as an epistemological point about what texts mean, whereas the latter is a sociological one about how claims about those meanings are produced.
Two examples to illustrate what Fish defines as the function of interpretive communities are seen here: The first of these Fish involves baseball umpire Bill Klem, who once waited a long time to call a particular pitch. The player asked him, impatiently, "Well, is it a ball or strike?" Klem's reply: "Sonny, it ain't nothing 'til I call it." What Fish is presenting here exemplifies the idea of interpretation: baseball supplies a rulebook, however, it is the discretion of the umpire to judge whether or not a pitch falls into the category of ball or strike. Balls and strikes are not undeniable truths.
The second example is found in Fish's essay "How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,"<ref name=isthereatextinthisclass?"">Fish, Stanley (1980). Is There a Text in This Class?. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-46726-4.</ref> which deals with a similar issue of individual interpretation. In this example, Fish considers how interpretation relates to cultural influence. He uses the example of a class he taught where a group of students analyzed a list of names he had written on the board. Fish had drawn a frame around the list and told his class it was a religious poem. The class then proceeded to interpret the list (which was in fact a list of linguists and literary critics) explaining to their teacher how they came to their conclusions. just because Fish told them that it was, and because that was their area of expertise. Fish uses this exercise to assert that "interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing. Interpreters do not decode poems; they make them." Culture fills our minds with assumptions and beliefs that are not only similar, but "alike in fine detail," and, because of this, individual originality and creativity are convenient fictions of our time.
[edit] Fish and university politics
A prominent public intellectual, and a hard man to pin down politically, Fish has spent considerable time in various public arenas vigorously debunking pieties of both the left and the right — sometimes in the same sentence.
In addition to his work in literary criticism, Fish has also written extensively on the politics of the university, having taken positions justifying campus speech codes and criticizing political statements by universities or faculty bodies on matters outside their professional areas of expertise.
Recently, Fish participated in a forum regarding the proper role of universities, which appeared in the September 2005 issue of Harper's Magazine; the article, in which Fish appeared alongside notable intellectuals, David Gelernter, Lani Guinier, and Elizabeth Hoffman, is entitled: "Affirmative reaction: When Campus Republicans Play the Diversity Card."
Fish has lectured across the country at many universities and colleges including Brown University, Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Georgia, the University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, and Bates College, recently.
[edit] Works
[edit] By Fish
- John Skelton's Poetry (Yale University Press, 1965)
- Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise Lost" (Harvard University Press, 1967).
- "Interpreting the Variorum" (Published in Critical Inquiry, 1976).
- "Why We Can't All Just Get Along" (Published in First Things, 1996).
- The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing (University of California Press, 1978).
- Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Harvard University Press, 1980).
- Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Duke University Press, 1989).
- There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, and it's a Good Thing, Too (Oxford University Press, 1994).
- A collection of essays. The title essay and an additional essay, "Jerry Falwell's Mother," focus on free speech issues. In the latter piece, Fish argues that, if one has some answer in mind to the question "what is free speech good for?" along the lines of "in the free and open clash of viewpoints the truth can more readily be known," then it makes no sense to defend deliberate malicious libel (such as that which was at issue in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell) in the name of "free speech."
- Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (Harvard University Press, 1999).
- The Trouble with Principle (Harvard University Press, 1999).
- How Milton Works (Harvard University Press, 2001).
[edit] Criticism and/or analysis of Fish
- The Stanley Fish Reader, edited by H. Aram Veeser (Blackwell Publishers, 1999).
- Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work of Rhetoric, by Gary A. Olson (State University Press of New York, 2002).
- Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise, edited by Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham (State University of New York Press, 2004).
[edit] External links
- Stanley Fish in the Johns Hopkins University Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism.
- Stanley Fish interview at the minnesota review, (March 3, 2000).
- FIU College of Law bio of Stanley Fish
- Leading Professor Stanley Fish to Join FIU Law Faculty
- Stanley Fish begins blogging for the New York Times (The actual blog is available only through a TimesSelect subscription)
- Stanley Fish audio interview about deconstruction
- Stanley Fish Resources Center Links to various texts by and about Stanley Fish.
[edit] Notes and references
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