Description
Book SynopsisStanley Fish is one of America's most stimulating literary theorists. In this book, he undertakes a reexamination of some of criticism's most basic assumptions. He penetrates to the core of the modern debate about interpretation, explodes numerous misleading formulations, and offers a proposal for a new way of thinking about the way we read.
Trade ReviewIt is a great…pleasure these days to find a critic willing to discuss language, literature, reading, writing, and the community of readers on the understanding that the reader plays a real part in the production of his experience. -- Denis Donoghue * Times Literary Supplement *
No bare summary of his conclusions can do justice to the brilliance of his analyses…
Is There a Text in This Class? is a substantial achievement which deserves the serious consideration of all students of literature. Its arguments are cogent, forceful and engaging, its style witty, personable and unpretentious, and its analyses are just, incisive and economical. Most important, the theory it advocates is provocative, comprehensive and, I believe, true. * Criticism *
These essays demonstrate why Fish has become the center—as both source and focus—of so much intellectual energy in contemporary American critical theory. For brilliance and forcefulness in argumentation and for sheer boldness of mind and spirit, he has no match. -- Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Table of ContentsPART ONE: Literature in the Reader 1. Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics 2. What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It? 3. How Ordinary Is Ordinary Language? 4. What It's Like To Read L'Allegro and II Penseroso 5. Facts and Fictions: A Reply to Ralph Rader 6. Interpreting the Variorum 7. Interpreting "Interpreting the Variorum" 8. Structuralist Homiletics 9. How To Do Things with Austin and Searle: Speech- Act Theory and Literary Criticism 10. What Is Stylistics and Why Are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It? Part II 11. Normal Circumstances and Other Special Cases 12. A Reply to John Reichert PART TWO: Interpretive Authority in the Classroom and in Literary Criticism 13. Is There a Text in This Class? 14. How To Recognize a Poem When You See One 15. What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable? 16. Demonstration vs. Persuasion: Two Models of Critical Activity Notes Index
