¹ In this article I will be concerned with (what I shall call) the ‘reader-centred hermeneutics’ of Fish's later (post-1975) writings, rather than his earlier ‘reader-oriented criticism’. I intend to discuss the latter in ‘Should Stanley Fish's Reader-Oriented Criticism “Catch On” in Biblical Studies?’ (forthcoming).

² Thiselton, Anthony C., New Horizons in Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins, 1992). For Thiselton's explanation of the ‘socio-pragmatic’/‘socio-critical’ distinction (which appears to be an interesting development of the traditional distinction between exegesis and eisegesis into a form more relevant to the current hermeneutical debate) see especially pp. 6, 7, 27f., 379; on Fish see especially pp. 515f., 537–50.Google Scholar A similar criticism of Fish has also been made by Jeanrond, Werner G., Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), pp. 112f.Google Scholar

³ See ibid. p. 549; I have removed Thiselton's italics from some of the quotations.

⁴ Moore, Stephen D., Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 120–6.Google Scholar

⁵ Other scholars who regard Fish's hermeneutics as having important insights to offer biblical studies include Adam, A. K. M., ‘The Sign of Jonah: A Fish-eye View’, Semeia, 51 (1990), 177–91;Google ScholarBurnett, Fred W., ‘Postmodern Biblical Exegesis: The Eve of Historical Criticism’, Semeia, 51 (1990), 51–80;Google Scholarand Porter, Stanley E., ‘Why Hasn't Reader-Response Criticism Caught On in New Testament Studies?’, Literature and Theology, 4 (1990), 278–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ See especially Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 318–21, 370;Google ScholarDoing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), pp. 14f., 26–9, 153–7, 322–5, 347–51, etc.Google Scholar

⁷ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 26.

⁸ Ibid. p. 351; cf. pp. 467, 522, 524, and Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 370.

⁹ E.g. Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 143, 323, 344, 347f, 350, 437f.

¹⁰ Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 322.

¹¹ Ibid. p. 330.

¹² See especially Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 344f.

¹³ I am grateful to DrDavies, G. I., and to DrBrett, Mark G., for their comments upon earlier versions of the material in this section and the next.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Cf. Fish, , Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 174;Google Scholaralso his article ‘Fear of Fish: A Reply To Walter Davis’ (Critical Inquiry 10 (1983–1984). 695–705), pp. 700–2.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid. P. 330.

¹⁶ The contrast that Fish makes between poems and assignments in this respect (ibid. p. 330) turns on a confusion between what is permissible in reading an assignment-text and in carrying out the assignment.

¹⁷ See Fish's illuminating discussion in Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 120–32.

¹⁸ Ibid. p. 324.

¹⁹ Ibid. p. 327.

²⁰ It has also been criticized by Scholes, Robert, Textual Power: Literal Theory and the Teaching of English (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 156–61, andGoogle ScholarDavis, Walter. A., ‘The Fisher King: Wille zur Macht in Baltimore’ (Critical Inquiry 10 (1983–1984), 668–94), PP. 670f. Neither Scholes nor Davis, however, adequately shows how thoroughly untenable Fish's interpretation is; nor (more importantly) do they sufficiently consider the methodological issues involved, nor grasp the implications that Fish's failure at this point has for his broader project.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ E.g. ibid. pp. 322, 327, 329.

²² See Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 345–9; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 103–10, 186.

²³ Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 347; cf. the supposed parallel he draws between Augustine's typological interpretations and ‘any [other] set of interpretive strategies’ in ibid. p. 170.

²⁴ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 113; Fish, of course, utterly rejects such positivism.

²⁵ Ibid. p. 194.

²⁶ Cf. his comments in Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 281–8, 297–8, 307–10; and Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 127–9, 184–5, 295–6, 358–9.

²⁷ Fish would doubtless object that I am begging the question here because my appeal to ‘the given’ is a classic example of the positivism that he rejects. I shall consider this issue in detail in Part II of this article; suffice at this juncture to say that I reject the hard-and-fast dichotomy between ‘the given’ and ’the interpreted’ which gives Fish's charges of positivism their force.

²⁸ Scholes, Robert, Textual power, p. 158;Google Scholarpace Davis, who seems to think that Fish's directing his students to interpret the text as a poem was sufficient to ensure that it would be so interpreted (‘The Fisher King’, p. 671).

²⁹ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 9.

³⁰ Cf. Fish's example from Some Like It Hot (see Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 295). The joke in this line, of course, is that dismissing Lemon's ‘argument’ as ‘[an] irrelevance’ is absurd; but absurd interpretations are really of no use to Fish.

³¹ For examples, see Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 345–9; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 76–8, 104–9, 186.

³² Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 346.

³³ For some trenchant comments on the severe problems that Fish would encounter if he tried to carry through the reinterpretation he envisages of Pride and Prejudice (Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 347f., 349f.) see Davis, Walter, ‘The Fisher King’, pp. 683–7. Fish's response (‘Fear of Fish: A Reply to Walter Davis’) does not address these points.Google Scholar

³⁴ Chapter 12 of Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 247'93; for other examples see ibid. pp. 106, 186–93; Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 272–4, 339–42. For some interesting commentary see Booth, Wayne C., “A New Strategy for Establishing a Truly Democratic Criticism”, Daedalus 112 (1983), 193–214.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid. p. 250.

³⁶ Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 180.

³⁷ See ibid. pp. 255f.

³⁸ Ibid. p. 288.

³⁹ Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 305–9; for further examples see ibid. pp. 274–7, 281–92; Doing What Comes Naturally, pp. 37–42, 128–9. ‘Jacobs—Rosenbaum…’ also belongs in this category.

⁴⁰ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 129; what eventualities ‘mutatis mutandis’ is intended to cover is left totally obscure.

⁴¹ Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 173, italics added; cf. pp. 178f.

⁴² As Fish himself puts it at one point: ‘[W]hatever is invoked as a constraint on interpretation will turn out upon further examination to have been the product of interpretation’ Doing What Comes Naturally, p. 512.

⁴³ See Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, p. 321; cf. Lentricchia, Frank, After the New Criticism (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 148.Google Scholar