11.2 Affective Stylistics and Stanley Fish

Affective stylistics and reader-response theory focus on how readers interact with texts emotionally and psychologically. This approach emphasizes that meaning isn't fixed within a text but created through the reader's engagement, influenced by their background and interpretive community.

Stanley Fish's concept of interpretive communities challenges the idea of objective meaning in texts. Instead, he argues that readers from similar backgrounds tend to interpret texts in similar ways, highlighting the subjective nature of literary interpretation.

Affective Stylistics and Reader-Response Theory

Affective stylistics in reader-response theory

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• Branch of reader-response theory focusing on emotional and psychological effects of text on reader
  • Emphasizes reader's subjective experience and interpretation
  • Meaning created through reader's interaction with text, not inherent
• Key proponents include Stanley Fish and Wolfgang Iser
• Explores how formal features (language, style, structure) evoke emotional responses in reader
  • Emotional responses shape reader's interpretation and understanding
  • Examples: Figurative language (metaphors, similes), tone, pacing, narrative structure

Interpretive communities of Stanley Fish

• Concept introduced in essay "Interpreting the Variorum"
• Groups of readers sharing similar assumptions, values, and strategies for interpreting texts
  • Shaped by factors like cultural background, education, social context
  • Example: Feminist interpretive community may focus on gender roles and power dynamics in texts
• Individual reader's interpretation influenced by their interpretive community
  • Readers within same community likely to have similar interpretations
  • Example: Marxist interpretive community may interpret texts through lens of class struggle and economic forces
• Challenges idea of single, objective meaning in text
  • Meaning constructed through interaction between text and reader, mediated by reader's interpretive community

Fish's challenge to objective meaning

• Challenges traditional notion of objective meaning inherent or fixed within text
• Meaning created through reader's interpretation, influenced by interpretive community and subjective experiences
  • No single, correct interpretation
  • Different interpretive communities may have different, equally valid interpretations
• Undermines concept of authorial intent
  • Author's intended meaning not necessarily same as meaning constructed by reader
  • Example: Author may intend a character to be sympathetic, but reader may interpret them as unlikeable based on their own experiences and values

Application of affective stylistics

• Consider how formal features evoke emotional responses in reader
• Example: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"
  • Narrator's repetitive language and frantic tone create anxiety and unease
  • Short, choppy sentences and obsessive focus on "vulture eye" contribute to growing dread
  • Structure, with building tension and abrupt climax, contributes to emotional response
  • Reader experiences relief and catharsis when narrator confesses
• Analyzing how stylistic choices shape reader's emotional experience demonstrates principles of affective stylistics
  • Reader's interpretation influenced by emotional response to text, shaped by formal features of writing
  • Examples of formal features: Word choice, sentence structure, narrative voice, imagery