Author Series 12 - Theorist Stanley Fish

Author Series 12 - Theorist

Stanley Fish  

* 1938 – ...

* American literary theorist, legal scholar, author and public intellectual. 

* Fish is a major figure associated with Postmodernism, instead he views himself as an advocate of Anti- Foundationalism.

* Major influence in the rise and development of Reader Response Theory. 

* He started his career as Medievalist. 

* Fish revealed in his partly biographical essay Milton, Thou Shouldst be Living at this Hour that he came to Milton by accident.

* Fish is best known for his analysis of Interpretive Communities an off shot of Reader-Response Criticism. 

* Terry Eagleton, a prominent British Marxist, excoriates Fish’s “discreditable epistemology” as ‘Sinister’. 

* The concept of “Interpretive Community” was developed by him. 

* Important Works of Fish  

1. Self-Consuming Artifacts: Experience of 17th Century 

2. In There A Text in This Class (1870) 

3. Save the World on Your Own Time (2008) 

4. How Milton Works (2001) 

5. There is No Such Thing as Free Speech (1994)