- Hardcover: 440 pages
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd Edition edition (12 Nov 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0333625153
- ISBN-13: 978-0333625156
- Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14.6 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,728,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
'Many think of Surprised by Sin as Stanley Fish's best book: not just provocative, but strategic, in directing attention to Milton's designs on his readers.' - Alastair Fowler, Times Literary Supllement
Product Description
In 1967 the world of Milton studies was divided into two armed camps, one proclaiming that Milton was of the devil's party, the other proclaiming that the poet's sympathies are obviously with God and the angels loyal to him. The achievement of Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin was to reconcile the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis: Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are and therefore the fact of their divided responses makes perfect sense. Thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I loved his reader-response criticism. He argues that the reader is initially tricked by Satan by his use of persuasive and seductive language, thus when he tricks Eve to eating the fruit, we are surprised at how much we were nearly caught up by Satan and trusting him. This allows us to appreciate God's grace more, because it is as though we have committed some kind of sin, together with Adam and Eve.
It is a highly sophisticated argument, very interesting, and I think it has opened a new way for me to approach Paradise Lost.
It is a highly sophisticated argument, very interesting, and I think it has opened a new way for me to approach Paradise Lost.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
A classic of Milton criticism
19 July 2001
Format:Paperback
According to Fish, "Paradise Lost" operates according to a mechanism of rhetorical indirection that works on all rhetorical levels, from depiction of character to deployment of tropes. Milton wants to show us how our fallen state corrupts and distorts our responses to poetry and instruction; the poem is constructed as a series of interlocking traps for the reader, who is lured into reacting in tempting but "wrong" ways to tropes ("with serpent error wandering") and characters (the apparently admirable Satan and his cohorts, the apparently tyrannical and odious God). The chapter on the poetics of prelapsarian Eden ("In Wandering Mazes Lost," I think it's called) is a masterpiece. Fish backs this all up with plenty of solid research into the theological doctrines Milton was known to endorse or was likely to have been familiar with.
This approach to Milton was regarded as radical when the book first came out, rather oddly, since Milton's tactics of indirection had already been noted by several critics, though not foregrounded as here. What's new is the thoroughness and clarity of the treatment, and Fish's sheer intelligence as a reader. This is criticism at its best: lucid, engaging, responsible, illuminating.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Fish is a bloody genius!
24 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
He also tends to be a bit long winded. Like nearly all literary criticism, the pages wasted on explication and redundancy are boring and just plain time-consuming. His thesis is brilliant. It's obvious once he states it, but it's not anything I have ever considered. It was originally published in 1967, so his theory has been out in academia for a long time now, but this is the first time I have been confronted with his perspective on the role of the reader in _Paradise Lost_. It also, in effect, makes Milton even more brilliant. I suppose I could have gone with 5 stars, but seriously, it's literary criticism: It's hard to "Love" Lit Crit...
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
After 300 years, the final word.
13 May 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Critics, including Shelley, have argued over "Paradise Lost" for over 300
years. Stanley Fish has answered the crucial question once and for all: "What
was Milton doing?" In a critical masterpiece, Fish has opened for all of us
the pedagogic purpose of this monumental work. With a pattern of "mistake,
correction, instruction," Fish has broken the code; showing at once that we
are still "fallen" and susceptible to the rhetoric of Satan and his minions,
and in what ways we, as "fallen man" continue to respond to the persuasion
of the serpent in the Garden. It's hard to see what more can be written about
"Paradise Lost" after this landmark exigesis. Read it and see how easily we
can be seduced - and today's political discourse continues the tradition.
years. Stanley Fish has answered the crucial question once and for all: "What
was Milton doing?" In a critical masterpiece, Fish has opened for all of us
the pedagogic purpose of this monumental work. With a pattern of "mistake,
correction, instruction," Fish has broken the code; showing at once that we
are still "fallen" and susceptible to the rhetoric of Satan and his minions,
and in what ways we, as "fallen man" continue to respond to the persuasion
of the serpent in the Garden. It's hard to see what more can be written about
"Paradise Lost" after this landmark exigesis. Read it and see how easily we
can be seduced - and today's political discourse continues the tradition.
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