Customer Reviews

Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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...

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.

Stanley Fish's Milton study is somewhat academic but readable. If you're a non-scholar, as I am, you'll likely find it handy for understanding many of the subtleties of Paradise Lost.

I used this book as a resource for an essay back in college (got an A+). It's fairly easy to read and offers some wonderful insights on Milton.

I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Bornholdt's review of Surprised by Sin. While Fish's analysis of Paradise Lost has become so over-hyped as to become akin to literary scripture in itself, his writing remains simplistic, his sentence structure convoluted, and his arguments riddled with holes. While it is true that there is plenty of theological research in evidence (in quite a few instances, the footnotes are larger than the main text on the page), there is noticeably little textual evidence sited in Paradise Lost itself; Mr. Fish is so busy engaging with other written texts that he fails to closely read the poem that he's supposed to be discussing.

Mr. Fish's idea that the reader is enticed to be "sinful" by the narrative is interesting: the problem, however, is that his argument is not based on Paradise Lost but on a personal belief system. While one must assume a certain religious system when reading a text like Paradise Lost, one must begin critical analysis with the poem itself and not with scripture. Often Paradise Lost does not adhere to Fish's theories; but rather than discuss such issues through textual evidence, Fish relies on the playground mentality/argument of "you're a sinner because you are."

Take Fish's analysis regarding the allusion to Ovid's Narcissus in Eve's birth, for example. Despite the fact that this moment is vital to the construction of Eve's character, Fish glosses over it in only three pages (out of 350). Why? Because his argument is lacking.

Regarding Eve's birth, Fish says that "one can either conclude . . . that 'we have glimpsed a dainty vanity in "our general mother" which the serpent will put to use' or contrive . . . to disengage her from the pejorative connotations of the myth." Ignoring the fact that there are more than these two ways in which this passage can be read, he himself says that, in order to "disengage" Eve from the negative connotations of the Narcissus allusion, one must "contrive" to do so ("contrive" meaning to devise, invent, or fabricate). One would think that if his theory was solid, he would not need to "contrive" an argument: he would simply have one.

But Fish fails to conduct a close reading of Milton's words in the same way that he fails to consider his own word choice. Blatantly ignoring the numerous parallels between the two characters that work against his theory, Fish suggests that the reader must not compare but contrast the two tales. But not only does he ignore the blatant parallels; he also ignores the blatant differences: he suggests that Eve is childlike and emphasizes that she eventually yields to Adam, but that's it. End of argument. He fails to deeply consider the language, content, or implications of the section. Amongst many other questions, what about the fact that Narcissus is cursed to fall in love with his own reflection while Eve is not? that Eve is interrupted and Narcissus is not? What about the implication of such words as "yield" and "seize"? After reading Ovid's story, any average reader could come up with at least half a dozen comparisons and/or contrasts between the two stories. But not only does he not support a reading against the comparison, but he does not successfully support his own reading for the contrasts either. He merely concludes that this section is a "puzzle" and that, since Eve could not possibly have been made flawed, she's not. Why? Because God wouldn't make Eve flawed. Where's the textual evidence? There is none. But any reader who thinks that Milton created a flawed Eve is a sinner. Why? Cuz you are.

(Any Eddie Izzard fans out there, cf. "You smell cuz you do. You're a twit cuz you are.")

This lack of textual engagement is the fatal flaw in Fish's analyses. While there may be something interesting in the idea that the poem is written in order to entice the reader to the Dark Side, Fish fails to prove it. Repeatedly his argument relies not on Paradise Lost itself but on (what seems to be) his personal belief system. For Fish the evidence is not in the poem but in scripture/doctrine/outside sources and the poem a mere inconvenience. Had I handed in such shoddy textual analysis in college, I never would have graduated.

Therefore I must disagree with Mr. Bornholdt's suggestion that Surprised by Sin is "lucid, engaging, responsible, illuminating." Fish's ideas are left unexplored, his conclusions unsupported and reductive. His writing style is rambling, his tone arrogant, and his parenthetical asides both distracting and often off-topic. There are a number of critics who have made similar (but better) arguments based in close textual readings and responsible scholarship; unfortunately (and inexplicably), Fish's book got all the press.

If you're a Milton scholar, you won't be able to avoid this book. But do yourself a favor and borrow it from the library. That $22 is much better spent photocopying the scholarship of others than slogging through this mess.