9.7 Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish's reader-response theory challenges traditional views of literary interpretation. He argues that meaning isn't fixed in texts but created through readers' interactions, shaped by their contexts and assumptions.

Fish's approach, called affective stylistics, examines how a text's features guide readers' experiences and emotions. He also introduced the concept of interpretive communities, groups sharing similar strategies for understanding texts.

Stanley Fish's reader-response theory

• Focuses on the active role of the reader in creating meaning from a text
• Argues that the meaning of a text is not fixed or inherent, but is produced through the reader's interaction with the text
• Challenges the idea of objective interpretation and suggests that interpretations are always shaped by the reader's context and assumptions

Affective stylistics approach

• Examines how the formal features of a text (syntax, word choice, etc.) shape the reader's experience and emotional response
• Analyzes the ways in which a text's style and structure guide the reader's expectations and interpretations
• Emphasizes the temporal process of reading and how meaning unfolds over time as the reader engages with the text
• Explores how texts manipulate readers' emotions and create suspense, surprise, or other affective responses (catharsis, empathy)

Interpretive communities concept

• Proposes that readers belong to interpretive communities that share certain assumptions, values, and strategies for interpreting texts
• Suggests that these shared interpretive frameworks shape how readers approach and make sense of texts

Shared interpretive strategies

Top images from around the web for Shared interpretive strategies

• 

  Frontiers | Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  hackee - - References and Resources View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  Dimensions of Culture – CaseWORK View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  Frontiers | Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  hackee - - References and Resources View original

  Is this image relevant?

1 of 3

Top images from around the web for Shared interpretive strategies

• 

  Frontiers | Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  hackee - - References and Resources View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  Dimensions of Culture – CaseWORK View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  Frontiers | Understanding Culture Clashes and Catalyzing Change: A Culture Cycle Approach View original

  Is this image relevant?

• 

  hackee - - References and Resources View original

  Is this image relevant?

1 of 3

• Members of an interpretive community employ similar strategies for reading and interpreting texts
• These strategies may include conventions of genre, cultural codes, or ideological assumptions (gender roles, class hierarchies)
• Shared strategies allow for a degree of interpretive consensus within a community, even if individual readers' responses vary

Influence on interpretation

• Interpretive communities constrain and enable certain interpretations of a text
• Readers' interpretations are not purely subjective or idiosyncratic, but are shaped by the norms and practices of their interpretive community
• Different interpretive communities may produce divergent or even conflicting interpretations of the same text (feminist vs. Marxist readings)

Fish's debates and controversies

Against New Criticism

• Challenges the New Critical emphasis on close reading and the autonomy of the literary text
• Argues that meaning is not inherent in the text itself, but emerges through the reader's interaction with the text
• Critiques the idea of the text as a self-contained, stable object that can be analyzed objectively

Against intentional fallacy

• Rejects the intentional fallacy, the idea that the author's intended meaning should guide interpretation
• Argues that authorial intention is ultimately unknowable and irrelevant to the reader's experience of the text
• Suggests that the meaning of a text is determined by the reader's interpretive strategies, not the author's intentions

Fish's later theoretical shifts

Interpretive authority

• In his later work, Fish explores the question of interpretive authority and who has the power to determine meaning
• Argues that interpretive authority is not inherent in the text or the author, but is negotiated within interpretive communities
• Suggests that dominant interpretations emerge through persuasion, rhetoric, and institutional power structures (academia, publishing)

Institutional contexts

• Examines how institutional contexts (universities, legal systems) shape interpretive practices and determine what counts as a valid interpretation
• Analyzes how interpretive communities are formed and sustained through institutional structures and discourses
• Explores the politics of interpretation and how certain interpretations become privileged or marginalized within institutional contexts

Legacy and influence

Impact on literary studies

• Fish's work helped to shift attention from the text itself to the reader's role in creating meaning
• Contributed to the development of reader-response criticism as a major theoretical approach in literary studies
• Challenged traditional assumptions about the objectivity and stability of literary interpretation

Poststructuralist connections

• Fish's emphasis on the instability of meaning and the role of interpretive communities resonates with poststructuralist theories
• Like poststructuralists, Fish questions the idea of a stable, inherent meaning in the text and highlights the contingency of interpretation
• Fish's work can be seen as a bridge between reader-response criticism and poststructuralist approaches to literature (deconstruction, discourse analysis)