FISH, STANLEY

born April 19, 1938, Providence, R.I., U.S. in full Stanley Eugene Fish American literary critic who is particularly associated with reader-response criticism, according to which the meaning of a text is created, rather than discovered, by the reader. Fish was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1959) and Yale University (M.A., 1960; Ph.D., 1962). He taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1974 to 1985 and at Duke University thereafter. In Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967), Fish suggested that the subject of John Milton's masterpiece is in fact the reader, who is forced to undergo spiritual self-examination when led by Milton down the path taken by Adam, Eve, and Satan. In Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980), Fish further developed his reader-as-subject theory. The essays in Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989) discuss a number of beliefs in literary theory. Fish's later works include There's No Such Thing As Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too (1994) and Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995).