Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish is a prominent American educator and literary critic known for his pivotal role in developing reader-response criticism, a theoretical approach that emphasizes the reader's experience and interpretation of texts rather than focusing solely on the text itself. Born in 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island, Fish was the first in his family to pursue higher education, earning degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. His early work, particularly "Surprised by Sin: The Reader in 'Paradise Lost'," established him as a leading authority on John Milton and marked his departure from New Criticism, which emphasizes the formal qualities of literature.
Throughout his career, Fish has taught at several prestigious institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University, where he also held administrative roles. His writings often challenge conventional academic practices, advocating for a focus on disciplinary expertise rather than the infusion of personal political beliefs into education. Fish has published numerous influential works, including "Is There a Text in This Class?" and "There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too," which interrogate the relationships between texts, readers, and the broader political context of academia. In recent years, he has continued to contribute to discussions on free speech, hate speech, and the role of universities in society.
Stanley Fish
Literary Critic
- Born: April 19, 1938
- Place of Birth: Providence, Rhode Island
EDUCATOR AND SCHOLAR
A controversial figure in American literary criticism, Fish turned away from the formalistic methods of New Criticism and its emphasis on text and toward reader-response criticism, which focuses on the direct experience of the reader.
AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Education; scholarship
Early Life
Stanley Fish was born in Providence, Rhode Island, to Max Fish and Ida Dorothy Weinberg. Stanley Fish’s father, a plumbing contractor, brought relatives who had escaped the Holocaust to the United States. Fish grew up in Philadelphia. The first in his family to pursue higher education, Fish earned a BA in 1959 from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1959, he married Adrienne A. Aaron, with whom he had a daughter, Susan. From Yale University, Fish earned an MA in 1960 and a PhD in 1962.
Following his education, Fish taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1962 until 1974. His first book, John Skelton’s Poetry, published in 1965, originated as the dissertation for his doctoral studies. This book is noted for its indebtedness to New Criticism. Fish’s career as a John Milton scholar began when, in 1963, he was asked to teach a course in Milton, though he had never taken a course in Milton. The course resulted in Fish’s second book, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost, published in 1967. This book established Fish not only as an authoritative Milton scholar but also as the founder of reader-response criticism. The book argues that readers, in the act of reading Milton’s poem, participate in and thus re-create the fall of Adam from grace into sin. By 1969, at the age of thirty-one, he had earned the title of full professor at Berkeley, he had published two full-length works, and he had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Life’s Work
Moving across the country in 1974, Fish taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, until 1985, serving as Kenan Professor of English from 1978 until the end of his tenure. Between 1976 and 1985, he served a joint appointment, teaching also for the University of Maryland Law School. Throughout the 1970s Fish returned to the discipline in which he had studied: Renaissance poetry. He edited the collection Seventeenth-Century Prose: Modern Essays in Criticism, published in 1971. The following year, in 1972, his book Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature appeared. In this Fish applies reader-response criticism to seventeenth century texts. Similarly, in The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing, published in 1978, Fish applies reader-response methods to the poetry of George Herbert.
Fish’s best-known book Is There a Text in This Class? Published in 1980 and exploring a subgenre of reader-response criticism referred to as interpretive communities, the book counters the formalism of New Criticism, which houses all meaning within the text itself, with a new interpretative strategy, suggesting that readers themselves produce meaning from the text. This book contains the title essay “Is There a Text in This Class?” and also “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” which argues that poems are made by the reader during the process of reading, which is shaped by institutional practices.
Divorcing his first wife in 1980, Fish married the feminist critic Jane Tompkins in 1982, and in 1985 he moved to Durham, North Carolina, after accepting a position at Duke University, where he served joint appointments in English and law. In addition, he served as chair of the English Department between 1986 and 1992 and as associate vice provost between 1993 and 1998. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies, published in 1989, introduces readers to Fish’s work in legal studies. Within this book, Fish argues against the application of theory to practice.
There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too, published in 1994, won the PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award. The book, which includes five essays written for public debates with Dinesh D’Souza, a policy analyst for the Ronald Reagan administration, suggests the impossibility of transcending one’s own biases in an argument. Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change followed in 1995. This book argues against the politicizing tendency of many academics and advocates to remain focused on their own fields of expertise. Similar in its attack on liberals is his 1999 publication The Trouble with Principle, in which Fish says it is not possible to stay neutral in arguments based on abstract principles.
In 1999, Fish moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago, serving as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences until 2005. Surprised by Sin was reprinted in 1998 and won the Hanford Book Award. He returned to his studies in Milton with the 2001 publication of How Milton Works. This text uncharacteristically provides close readings of both Milton’s poetry and prose and thematically focuses on humanity’s departure from God.
Fish moved to Miami in 2005, accepting a position as Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law at Florida International University. He returned to his focus on the purpose of the university and the goals of academics, who, he argues, should teach bodies of knowledge and modes of inquiry rather than indoctrinate students with political and ethical values. He presented this argument in his 2008 publication Save the World on Your Own Time. Fish published The Fugitive in Flight: Faith, Liberalism and Law in a Classic TV Show, an analysis of the television drama The Fugitive (1963–67), in 2010. His 2011 book How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, a writing manual in which he analyzes great sentences from English literature, was a New York Times Best Seller. He again returned his attention to contemporary higher education with his 2014 book Versions of Academic Freedom: From Professionalism to Revolution. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times and from 2006 to 2013 he wrote a regular column for that newspaper. In 2013, Fish became the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law, where he taught constitutional and statutory interpretation.
Fish continued to write in his later years, publishing Winning Arguments: What Works and What Doesn't Work in Politics, the Bedroom, the Courtroom, and the Classroom in 2016 and The First: How to Think About Hate Speech, Campus Speech, Religious Speech, Fake News, Post-Truth, and Donald Trump in 2019. In 2024, at the age of eighty-six, Fish published the book Honest Dishonesty.
Significance
Often a controversial figure in American literary studies, Fish is known for going against the grain of current practices. Educated at Yale University under the auspices of New Criticism, he established his career with a book on Milton that focuses not on Milton but on the reader of Milton. Moving away from specific literary texts, he sharpened his focus more clearly on the experience of the reader, who, he argued, was a necessary part in establishing the text. Then he turned his attention to the common practice of academicians, who permeate their classrooms with their political views rather than limiting their influence to their established fields of study. Fish also has argued against the possibility of successfully applying theory to practice. As a literary theorist arguing against the usefulness of theory, Fish, ever the rhetorician, extols the primacy of the rhetorical situation.
Bibliography
Fish, Stanley. “Holocaust Denial and Academic Freedom.” Valparaiso University Law Review 35.3 (2001): 499–524. Print.
Fish, Stanley. “An Interview with Stanley Fish: Aiming Low in the Ivory Tower.” National Civic Review 94.2 (2005): 41–45. Print.
Fish, Stanley. "Honest Dishonesty." New College of Florida, 3 July 2024, www.ncf.edu/news/essay-by-dr-stanley-fish-honest-dishonesty/. Accessed 1 Sept. 2024.
Fish, Stanley. "So Long, It's Been Good to Know You." New York Times. New York Times, 23 Dec. 2013. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.
Olson, Gary A. Stanley Fish, America's Enfant Terrible: The Authorized Biography. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2016. Print.
Olson, Gary A. Justifying Belief. Albany: State U of New York P, 2002. Print.
Olson, Gary A., and Lynn Worsham. Postmodern Sophistry. Albany: State U of New York P, 2004. Print.
Williams, Jeffrey J., ed. Critics at Work: Interviews, 1993–2003. New York: New York UP, 2004. Print.