[Milton-L] Symposium on Milton's Samson

[Hannibal Hamlin]

All this back and forth about whether Fish is a card-carrying intentionalist
seems a little odd to me. Is this really still a live issue? Surely we have
long since moved beyond Barthes, Foucault, and the death of the author. How,
for instance, can one reconcile the preoccupation of so many Miltonists with
Milton's theology (via De Doctrina) with a belief that the author's
intention is a fallacy, projection, what have you? I'm not sure there is any
other author in history whose intentions were so obviously at the forefront
of his work (which is not to say that determining them precisely is at all
straightforward). What of Milton's prose works, with which so many critics
are involved? Would anyone really argue that we cannot or should not try to
determine the polemical intention of Milton's polemical prose? Moreover, why
do so many writers, including major critics, continue to produce biographies
if we are done with intention? Obviously, we want to avoid theoretical
naivety, but slinging around the label "intentionalist" as if it were
automatically daming seems equally naive.

Hannibal






On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Michael Gillum <mgillum at unca.edu> wrote:

> Fish wrote  _Surprised by Sin_ in (I suppose) 1965-66, before continental
> Theory had made much of an impact in the US. New Criticism was still very
> influential. If Fish made an effort to avoid intentionalist language in
> SbS,
> I suspect that would reflect the influence of Wimsatt rather than Barthes.
> But SbS is evidently intentionalist in spirit. Fish was trying to get at
> intention by discussing features of the text and how they shape the
> responses of what he posits as a typical reader. I don't recall whether he
> ever slipped into the overt intentionalism that marks _How Milton Works_.
>
> Did/does Fish have a particular respect for Milton grounded in religious
> belief that led him to treat Milton's poetry in a historical-intentionalist
> way and to avoid subjecting it to the various fashionable maneuvers by
> which
> he scrambled to the top of the profession?
>
> Michael
>
>
> On 5/6/09 11:47 PM, "Harold Skulsky" <hskulsky at smith.edu> wrote:
>
> > I have had time to read only Stanley Fish's little talk (on four things
> > one can do with SA). There is nothing particularly arresting in it, as
> > far as I can see, and certainly nothing new. But I would be much obliged
> > if someone have the kindness to explain the miraculous transformation on
> > display here.
> >
> > The Fish of yore I knew and despised was a fellow traveler of Rorty at
> > his nihilistic worst, given to shamelessly outré manipulations of
> > whatever text was at his mercy ‹ in short, the phenomenally popular
> > operator of a three-card monte game whose time had come. The Fish on
> > display in the current little talk is a cuddly elder statesman, a
> > venerable teddybear of old-fashioned historical intentionalism (is
> > Hirsch still with us?), gently rapping the knuckles of anachronists and
> > other poachers in the margins of other men's books, and leaving behind a
> > tinkle of mild but affectionate laughter. Perhaps the miraculous
> > transformation is merely another (unremarkable) reminder that what goes
> > around comes around. Still, I can't resist the suspicion that there is
> > something afoot here ‹ something important that eludes me.
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>
>
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-- 
Hannibal Hamlin
Associate Professor of English
The Ohio State University
Burkhardt Fellow,
The Folger Shakespeare Library
201 East Capitol Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
hamlin.22 at osu.edu/
hamlin.hannibal at gmail.com
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