Stanley Eugene Fish

Essays reexamine the fundamental assumptions of literary criticism, and the debate about interpretation, and offer a fresh approach to thinking about literature

The Authority of Interpretive Communities

Is There a Text in this Class?

The foremost theoretical statement and practical criticism of seventeenth century texts from the standpoint of reader response.

The Experience of Seventeenth-century Literature

Self-consuming Artifacts

Professor of English and Professor of Law Stanley Fish

George Herbert and Catechizing

The Living Temple

In 1967 Milton studies was divided into two camps: one claiming (per Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devil's party, the other claiming (per Addison and C. S. Lewis) that the poet's sympathies were obviously with God and his loyal angels. Fish has reconciled the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis.

The Reader in Paradise Lost

Surprised by Sin

A vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and the right, Stanley Fish takes aim at the ideological gridlock paralyzing academic and political exchange in the nineties. Fish is Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of Law at Duke University, and the author of many books.

There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too

The author explains that history and context determine a principle's content and power and that "intellectual and religious liberty ... are artifacts of the very partisan politics they supposedly transcend."--Jacket.

The Trouble with Principle

Ce sont les lecteurs qui font les livres, voilà l'argument défendu par S. Fish. Cette théorie du lecteur-faiseur de texte montre qu'il n'est pas nécessaire d'attendre que l'auteur donne la bonne clé d'interprétation du texte qu'il serait seul à détenir. Chaque lecteur bien vivant a le libre choix de l'interprétation.

l'autorité des communautés interprétatives

Quand lire c'est faire

In recent years, the world of literary and cultural studies has been riven by a fierce debate between those who would transform interpretative work and those who fear that their work would destroy the very essence of literary criticism.

Literary Studies and Political Change

Professional Correctness

Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, first published in 1967, set a new standard for Milton criticism and established its author as one of the world's preeminent Milton scholars. The lifelong engagement begun in that work culminates in this book, the magnum opus of a formidable critic and the definitive statement on Milton for our time. How Milton works "from the inside out" is the foremost concern of Fish's book, which explores the radical effect of Milton's theological convictions on his poetry and prose. For Milton the value of a poem or of any other production derives from the inner worth of its author and not from any external measure of excellence or heroism. Milton's aesthetic, says Fish, is an "aesthetic of testimony": every action, whether verbal or physical, is or should be the action of holding fast to a single saving commitment against the allure of plot, narrative, representation, signs, drama--anything that might be construed as an illegitimate supplement to divine truth. Much of the energy of Milton's writing, according to Fish, comes from the effort to maintain his faith against these temptations, temptations which in any other aesthetic would be seen as the very essence of poetic value. Encountering the great poet on his own terms, engaging his equally distinguished admirers and detractors, this book moves a 300-year debate about the significance of Milton's verse to a new level.

Stanley Eugene Fish

About

Books

Join the club