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Revision as of 06:31, 7 November 2005 by 68.21.188.170 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Stanley Fish (born 1938) is a prominent literary theorist. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Fish 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 the Spring of 2005, his final semester at UIC, Professor Fish taught a course in literary criticism and theory entitled, "Religion, Citizenship & Identity." 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.
Considered a leading scholar of Milton, Fish's distinguished reputation began with his critical analysis of the seventeenth century poet's work. Two of Fish's books, Surprised By Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost 1967, and How Milton Works, 2001, reflect over five decades of his scholarship analyzing Milton.
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 exitstence in one or more communities, each of which are defined as a 'community' by a distinct epistemology. Fish works to reconcile two arguments: first, that the only possible interpretation of a work is in the context of a particular interpretive communities inderstanding of said work; the second argument -- which is Fish's claim -- that the only possible meaning of a text is the meaning that the author intended; his solution separates the two modes of thought, but allows room for both. Fish distinguishes one as a sociological claim, and the other as authorial intent. While the only true meaning is what the author intended, what a given reader will see will vary based on their own interpretive community.
A simple illustration of interpretive communities is Fish's story of baseball umpire Bill Klem, who once waited a long time to call a particular pitch. "Well, is it a ball or strike," the player asked impatiently. To which Klem replied, "Sonny, it ain't nothing 'til I call it" - saying, in effect, that balls and strikes are not facts in the world but "come into being only on the call of an umpire."
A prominent public intellectual, his works include Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980), There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It is a Good Thing, Too (1994 ISBN 0195093836), and The Trouble with Principle (1999). As his provocative titles indicate, Fish has vigorously debunked pieties of both the left and the right -- sometimes in the same sentence. In 1999, "The Stanley Fish Reader" was published, edited by H. Aram Veeser; in 2004, a volume of reactions on Fish's work was published: "Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise", edited by Gary Olson and Lynn Worsham.
Fish has said that deconstruction: "relieves me of the obligation to be right . . . and demands only that I be interesting." Charles Murray of the conservative American Enterprise Institute calls that "a silly thing for a grown man to say and a criminal thing for a teacher to say."
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.
Works
External links
- Stanley Fish in the Johns Hopkins University Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism.
- Stanley Fish interview at the minnesota review
- Leading Professor Stanley Fish to Join FIU Law Faculty