[Milton-L] Fish and Milton

[Watt, James]

Dear Jim & Michael:

You'll both remember that SbS came earlier than Stanley's campaign to turn Duke into Theory City for the world.  Most of the fuss re: Fish has to do with IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS? which privileged his witty play with students and texts over critical theory or theories. Self-Destructing Artifacts, I believe, came between these two books and included some surprising & breathtakingly beautiful readings of George Herbert among other treasures.  When you recall that prior to SbS the 'major' text (pace Empson) was C.S. Lewis's Preface it's hard to get terribly upset about Fish.  Readers, whether they are classically trained in rhetoric, or merely battered by theological training and personal history, do have responses to texts.  And PL is certainly a text that directly addresses the reader and obviously sets traps for him or her.  If anything, PL is better at this sort of shifting the ground under the narrative than either Vergil or Homer. Or if not better, I think you can at least suggest he's more invested in it.  He still stands at a crucial point in the intellectual history of the west, encompassing not merely the rise of science and technology, but the expansion of political and social thought as governments and policy makers tried to keep up with the expansion of trade and capital in directions not anticipated by the medieval and classical periods. One can hardly be surprised that he would understand that the end of credulity and superstition would not be the same thing as the end of the incredible and the marvelous.  Or that language plays a huge and Organic part in our dealings with a God and a world that includes creatures obviously shaped for creative dealing.  This includes, of course, theorists and teachers as well as practicing politicians and poets.

Jim Watt
________________________________________
From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Gillum [mgillum at unca.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 8:18 PM
To: milton-l
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Fish and Milton

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 “the reader” 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.
> _______________________________________________
> Milton-L mailing list
> Milton-L at lists.richmond.edu
> Manage your list membership and access list archives at
> http://lists.richmond.edu/mailman/listinfo/milton-l
>
> Milton-L web site: http://johnmilton.org/