I thought Fish's column was great, too! I've been passing it around to my friends. He was a Renaissance scholar before he decided to get a law degree, and I really liked his scholarly work: he and his wife developed theories of reading based on reader response balanced against authorial intent. His theoretical statement on reading, as follows, is one of my favorite things: "Literature is a kinetic art, but the physical form it assumes prevents us from seeing its essential nature, even though we so experience it."
I thought Fish's column was great, too! I've been passing it around to my friends. He was a Renaissance scholar before he decided to get a law degree, and I really liked his scholarly work: he and his wife developed theories of reading based on reader response balanced against authorial intent. His theoretical statement on reading, as follows, is one of my favorite things: "Literature is a kinetic art, but the physical form it assumes prevents us from seeing its essential nature, even though we so experience it."
ReplyDeleteI was at Carolina when Fish was at Duke (is he still there?)and remember his early "controversies."
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