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= **Stanley Eugene Fish** =

"It is of no help to us that there is an absolute truth of the matter of things because unfortunately, none of us are in a position to say definitively what that is- Although we all think we are."  -Stanley Fish

__** Introduction **__

Stanley Fish is an American literary theorist, critic, non-fiction writer, essayist, and legal scholar. He is known as an insightful critic of contemporary culture. Fish is the author of thirteen books and is known as the second most famous English professor in America. Fish is associated with postmodernism and reader response theory. His essays and articles have appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harpers Magazine, Esquire, The Atlantic, and The New York Times.

Fish’s writing style played significant roles in his books’ successes. He won over critics and created considerable debates regarding text. He is a provocative literary theorist and intellectual heroine. Fish has earned distinction for 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 he explored the role of the reader in determining the meaning of a text. He later applied his particular theory to legal studies. Fish is known for controversial stances.

__** Biography **__

Stanley Eugene Fish was born on April 19, 1938 and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. Fish and his family moved to Philadelphia where he attended the University of Philadelphia. Fish received his B.A. in 1959. Shortly after graduating from the University of Philadelphia Fish married Adrienne Aaron, they had one daughter and divorced in 1980. In 1967, Fish began his first teaching job at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1974, Fish moved to John Hopkins University, where he was named Kenan professor of English. In 1982, he married his second wife, Jane Tompkins who was also a professor. In 1985, Fish began working at Duke University, there he served as arts and sciences distinguished professor of English and law, chair of the English department, associate vice provost, and executive director of Duke University press. Since 1999, Fish has held the position of Dean of college of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

__** Theory Overview **__

Stanley Fish invented the idea of the readers ability to understand a text is also subject a readers particular "interpretive community". To simplify his ideas, a reader brings certain assumptions to a text based on the interpretive strategies he/she has learned in a particular interpretive community. For Fish, the interpretive community serves somewhat to "police" readings and thus prohibits outlandish interpretations. "Interpretive communities" is a concept that was articulated by Stanley Fish. This concepts involves that the readers within an "interpretive community" share reading strategies, values, and interpretive assumptions.

Stanley Fish believed that there are two kinds of reader response criticisms: a phenomenological approach and an epistemological theory. A phenomenological approach to criticism represents many of Fish's early works. The epistomological theory approach to criticism represents Fish's later works. A phenomenological approach is an analysis of the developing responses of the reader in relation to the words as they succeed one another in time. The idea of epistemic beliefs is that nothing we see, perceive, or think is uninterpreted.

Fish's early academic work was in seventeenth century English literature and he found himself taking exception and a specific liking to how formalism interpreted the works of the text. Formalism had a concept to basically ignore the experience of the reader. Fish originally proposed the idea of an interpretive system called affective stylistics. In that approach, a literary work is not an object alone that is simply created by an author. The critic using affective stylistics must also consider what a text does and the affect it has on the reader. Fish believed that "to ignore the affect of a work misconstrues the very essence of literature and reading". Literature exists and signifies when it is read and Fish felt strongly about that and used that in his criticism, theories, and teachings.

Stanley Fish was a believer in reader response theory and the importance of the text. Every interpretation by each unique reader was subjective to their own personal "interpretive community" and how they understood, interpreted, and dissected a particular work or text. Fish speaks a lot about "interpretive communities", analyzing words and texts, and the readers relations to those words or texts. For Fish, like all reader response critics, believes a text is completely open to translation by the reader and that there is little value in consulting a dictionary for terms or a history of a subject. Fish believed that the reader has total power in the interpretation of a text. In Fish's theory, it is the reader who is in a state of expectation as he/she reads from word to word in a sentence of a work. Fish also strongly believes in the concept of the informed reader, that is the someone who brings a certain level of competence in the language and the conventions of literature.

By 1980, Fish had greatly modified his theory because of criticism and backlash coming from fellow critics. Fish conceded that much of his original theory was based on his own experience as a reader. In order to defend this approach he then created the concept of the "interpretive community". Fish believed that knowledge is not objective but rather a product of social conditioning, every reader brings certain assumptions to a text based on the interpretive strategies he/she has learned in a particular circumstance. So nature, nurture, culture, education, location, etc. would all be factors that would affect one's view of their interpretive community. Fish greatly developed his concept of the interpretive community because it was seen as a theory much like a convention or language itself, something that is or can be agreed upon by the majority, however, it does not reflect in any way a higher truth.

__** Major Works **__

Fish began his career with strictly academic subjects. His first book, //John Skelton's Poetry//, grew out of his doctoral thesis. His second book, //Surprised By Sin//, argues that the subject is actually the reader. The next book, //Self-Consuming Artifacts//, identifies two types of literature: rhetorical and dialectical. Fish's next book, //Is There a Text in This Class//, reiterates and re-evaluates the reader as the subject and emphasizes the role of an "interpretive community". //Doing What Comes Naturally//, came out in 1989 and this book broadens the scope of the authors work in literary criticism to now include legal studies. As Fish's interest in politics grew, he wrote: //There's No Such Thing as Free Speech//, //It's a Good Thing Too//, //Professional Correctness//, and //The Trouble With Principle.//



__** References **__

Cengage, Gale and Hunter, Jeffery. //Fish, Stanley- Introduction//. __Contemporary Literary Criticism__. Ed. Vol. 142. 2001.  Fish, Stanley. //Opinionator//. The New York Times. 4-11-2011. New York Times Company.  Friedman, Lauri. //Censorship//. Writing the Critical Essay. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Lang, Chris. //The Reader Response Theory of Stanley Fish//. __A Brief History of Literary Theory III__ < http://www.xenos.org/essays/litthry4.htm> McManus, Barbara F. //Reader-Response Criticism.// 1998.  Powell, Jim. //Postmodernism For Beginners//. Connecticut: Writers and Readers, Inc, 1998. Shulevitz, Judith. //The Indefensible Stanley Fish//. 12-27-1999. Slate Group LLC 2011.  Woods, Tim. //Beginning Postmodernism//. New York: Manchester University Press, 1999. Image 1: < http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wonkette.com/images/2006/04/stanley%2520fish%2520professor%2520blogger.jpg&imgrefurl=http://wonkette.com/167381/stanley-fish-has-a-blog&usg=__b0vPGq5eQPZ0mxQy_YRYdYMW6nY=&h=150&w=121&sz=9&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=2K4x64HNxAStjM:&tbnh=120&tbnw=96&ei=yRSyTZ3HDIvTiALS_eyvBg&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstanley%2Bfish%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1152%26bih%3D523%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=754&vpy=193&dur=2533&hovh=120&hovw=96&tx=65&ty=67&page=1&ndsp=11&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0> Image 2:  Image 3: 