[Milton-L] Fish and Milton

[Michael Gillum]

Jim,

Fish's idea of the community of interpreters who share hermeneutic
principles came later. It is a really useful idea to bring into the
classroom when a student offers an interesting interpretation that isn't
objectively wrong, but is not the sort of thing that would be said within
the contemporary academic community.

I think when SbS says the text of PL lures readers off base and picks them
off or corrects them, Fish the author means that Milton the author
constructed these traps intentionally. However, as you say, Fish obviously
is making assumptions about how ³the reader² reads.

Michael


On 5/8/09 7:45 PM, "James Rovira" <jamesrovira at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's been too long since I've read SbS, Michael, but what you say
> below fits what I recall thinking at the time.  Fish seemed to assume
> a specific kind of reader -- a reader with some knowledge and
> sophistication.  When we consider that Milton would be included as one
> of these types of readers, we have an implicitly stated intentionalist
> argument.  But here intention would mean not what the author was
> thinking at the moment of composition, but what the author thinks as
> the best reader of his/her own work in a community of readers who
> shares approximately the same knowledge and interpretive principles.
> 
> Jim R
> 
> On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Michael Gillum <mgillum at unca.edu> wrote:
> 
> <<I think 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.
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