A Study On Stanley Fish' Reader-Response Theory

Stanley Fish was the representative figure of American reader-responsecriticism. In the seventies on the 20th century, he had begun to struggle for thepower of the reader-response criticism from object to "the affective fallacy" ofthe New Criticism. He was against looking for meaning of literary works onlyin text, and he thought that meaning comes from the readers' individualreading experience. He put forward a kind of experience analytic to replace thetextural criticism of the New Criticism, which realized turning from text centreto reader's transition of the centre for the first time. This is a great change inthe reader-response criticism.In "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics" (1970), Fish regarded theobjectivity of the text as a kind of mirage. It is not an objective carrier of themeaning, but the event happening in the readers'reading course. The meaningis a kind of response experience in the course of reading. Fish thought that thetext analysis of the New Criticism is a method of criticism based on view ofthe static text. And the text analysis turns the time experience of readingcourse into the space experience of text, has totally neglected the objective factof the activity of reading. Fish maintain we must replace text analyticapproach criticized with reader experience analytic approach. The newapproach pays close attention to is an specific reader's developinginstantaneous response in reading, it makes our experience of reading "moderate ", thus make us notice the event that is not paid attention to buthappening in fact.Fish thought it was not any response that can become the target oft hisanalytic approach of experience. Drawn lessons from the theory of modernlinguistics, he constructed an ideal mode of "the informed reader" with elite'scolor as its ideal target. This ideal reader is not merely has grammar ability andsemantic competence to use a certain language skillfully, and should also haveabundant literature experience. "The informed reader" is not only an abstractconcept, his "prototype "but also is a critic with abundant literature experience.However, because "the informed reader" in different culture or eras hasnothing in common with each other, any real reader can not become " theinformed reader " for all eras, so" the informed reader " is a kind of idealmode. After denying the objectivity of the text, Fish regarded the Authorial Intentas the destructed goal again. Fish thought there is not the only correct authorialintent in text, and the Authorial Intent is only the function and tactics ofreading behavior. Things that the reader has seen are the things which hisinterpretive strategies allow or lead him to read, and then he sum up what hesaw to one text and a kind of intention. Since "the original Authorial Intent"doesn't exist, so does"the wrong explanation". Therefore, we can not tellwhich one is good among so many kinds of the constructions of readers'meanings a fine or not question while. Fish created the concept of "interpretive communities"as the controllingmechanism of the readers'response. It is not only for preventing readers fromexplaining the text wantonly in theory, but also for explaining the relativeconsistency and absolute difference in readers'response to text. Fish thoughtthe interpretive communities are made up of those who share interpretivestrategies. The existence of the community is regarded as the basic reason ofproducing difference of numerous schools. Every community understands thetext according to one's own interpretive strategies. The difference natureresponse has produced to the same text in different person because of explaincommunity. Readers belong to the same community adopt same interpretivestrategies, so the meaning they explain is stability in some way; Interpretivestrategies is not natural or general but the one that must practice, so it isalways temporary, thus the stability of the community is relative. This makemeaning of literary works always inconsistent, and this kind inconsistent tocan "dispute "under sure principles. In his collection of thesis "Is There a Text in This Class?"(1980), Fishexpanded the Interpretive Communities to an ontology conception. He pointedout that all objects are the manufactured goods of the interpretive strategiesthat we implement. Self is a kind of social structure, whose activity is limitedby the Interpretive Communities which supplies interpretive strategies tooneself. The Interpretive Communities has not only made the object, but alsomade the subject of explaining activity. In this way, the meaning is neither acharacteristic of the steady confirmed text nor property of the independentrestraint-free readers, but the common character of the InterpretiveCommunities. When the Interpretive Communities makes Fish's theory get ridof the text's control completely, it destroys the readers' self-independence too.