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Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost
In 1967 the world of Milton studies was divided into two armed camps: one proclaiming (in the tradition of Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devil's party with or without knowing it, the other proclaiming (in the tradition of Addison and C. S. Lewis) 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--that is, fallen--and the poem's lesson is proven on a reader's impulse every time he or she finds a devilish action attractive or a godly action dismaying.
Fish's argument reshaped the face of Milton studies; thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.
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--that is, fallen--and the poem's lesson is proven on a reader's impulse every time he or she finds a devilish action attractive or a godly action dismaying.
Fish's argument reshaped the face of Milton studies; thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.
436 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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377 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Fish
66 books120 followersStanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is often associated with postmodernism, at times to his irritation, as he describes himself as an anti-foundationalist.
He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in Miami, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books. Professor Fish has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Duke University.
He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in Miami, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books. Professor Fish has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Duke University.
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February 9, 2021Lewis writes in his preface to The Screwtape Letters that "the devil is a liar." As my advisor puts it, Fish assumes here that readers of Paradise Lost won't remember that Satan is the father of lies.
Fish in Is There a Text in This Class? (p. 21): "[T]he thesis of that book [Surprised by Sin] is that Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are. It follows, I argue, that the difficulties one experiences in reading the poem are not to be lamented or discounted but are to be seen as manifestations of the legacy left to us by Adam when he fell. Milton's strategy in the poem is to make the reader self-conscious about his own performance, to force him to doubt the correctness of his responses, and to bring him to the realization that his inability to read the poem with any confidence in his own perception is its focus."
Here's W. Gardner Campbell's summary in "Temptation" in The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost (pp. 165–66): "The most influential solution to the problem of God's tempting his own creation [?] is offered in Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin. Fish believes that Paradise Lost is a kind of dramatic catechism, a moral education by means of temptation not only for Adam and Eve, but also for the reader. As we read the epic, according to Fish, we ourselves are tempted by the complexities of Milton's portrayal of temptation in ways that, if we are attentive to the bedrock assertions of Milton's theology, demonstrate to us again and again the realities of [our] own fallenness. For Fish, the fact that we find Milton's temptations problematic is the most compelling evidence possible that we are fallen ourselves; and Milton has structured his poem to bring us face-to-face with that compelling evidence over and over, thus continually surprising us with the irreducible sinfulness of our own fallen sensibilities. Unlike Blake or Empson, Fish offers a remarkably consistent Milton, so consistent that Fish could confidently title an anthology of his own Milton criticism How Milton Works, a title suggesting an exhaustive and definitive answer to our many questions."
Rumrich takes aim at this work in his Milton Unbound. Peter Herman is happy to situate himself as an anti-Fish when it comes to Milton criticism. Kerrigan et al. offer a helpful summary in their introduction to Paradise Lost (somewhere around p. 280).
Nigel Smith's Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? is aimed in large part at combating Fish's claim here ("that Milton was trying to induce sinful thoughts in his readers so that he could then teach them the error of their ways" [12]) and his claim in How Milton Works ("that Milton is the apologist for an ultimately theological and contained view of life" [12]).
Ryken says in Milton's Paradise Lost, "Although not advertising itself as a Christian reading of the poem, it is the most influential Christian interpretation of Paradise Lost" (91).
Apparently, Fish:
- claims in this book that the plain style of Heaven is the teaching style, whereas the grand style of Hell is deceptive (see 6–7, 61, 89). That is to say, rhetoric/eloquence is essentially sophistry, and Christians ought to prefer logic.
- reverses this claim in Self-Consuming Artifacts.
- comes back to this claim in How Milton Works.
Fish in Is There a Text in This Class? (p. 21): "[T]he thesis of that book [Surprised by Sin] is that Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are. It follows, I argue, that the difficulties one experiences in reading the poem are not to be lamented or discounted but are to be seen as manifestations of the legacy left to us by Adam when he fell. Milton's strategy in the poem is to make the reader self-conscious about his own performance, to force him to doubt the correctness of his responses, and to bring him to the realization that his inability to read the poem with any confidence in his own perception is its focus."
Here's W. Gardner Campbell's summary in "Temptation" in The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost (pp. 165–66): "The most influential solution to the problem of God's tempting his own creation [?] is offered in Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin. Fish believes that Paradise Lost is a kind of dramatic catechism, a moral education by means of temptation not only for Adam and Eve, but also for the reader. As we read the epic, according to Fish, we ourselves are tempted by the complexities of Milton's portrayal of temptation in ways that, if we are attentive to the bedrock assertions of Milton's theology, demonstrate to us again and again the realities of [our] own fallenness. For Fish, the fact that we find Milton's temptations problematic is the most compelling evidence possible that we are fallen ourselves; and Milton has structured his poem to bring us face-to-face with that compelling evidence over and over, thus continually surprising us with the irreducible sinfulness of our own fallen sensibilities. Unlike Blake or Empson, Fish offers a remarkably consistent Milton, so consistent that Fish could confidently title an anthology of his own Milton criticism How Milton Works, a title suggesting an exhaustive and definitive answer to our many questions."
Rumrich takes aim at this work in his Milton Unbound. Peter Herman is happy to situate himself as an anti-Fish when it comes to Milton criticism. Kerrigan et al. offer a helpful summary in their introduction to Paradise Lost (somewhere around p. 280).
Nigel Smith's Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? is aimed in large part at combating Fish's claim here ("that Milton was trying to induce sinful thoughts in his readers so that he could then teach them the error of their ways" [12]) and his claim in How Milton Works ("that Milton is the apologist for an ultimately theological and contained view of life" [12]).
Ryken says in Milton's Paradise Lost, "Although not advertising itself as a Christian reading of the poem, it is the most influential Christian interpretation of Paradise Lost" (91).
Apparently, Fish:
- claims in this book that the plain style of Heaven is the teaching style, whereas the grand style of Hell is deceptive (see 6–7, 61, 89). That is to say, rhetoric/eloquence is essentially sophistry, and Christians ought to prefer logic.
- reverses this claim in Self-Consuming Artifacts.
- comes back to this claim in How Milton Works.
August 27, 2012
This is an over-long book full of untranslated blocks of French and Latin with some surprisingly good points, let me summarize them (the good points) for you:
1) Milton tries to educate the reader through PL by repeatedly 'tempting' them to misinterpret the poem then showing them how they're wrong through the epic voice or God's speeches
2) God has to be such a boring character because He was to be authoritative and fun rhetoric is not authoritative
3) the epic voice is not always reliable
4) Milton uses some words (e.g. 'fallen', 'wand'ring', etc) repeatedly very different contexts, it's useful to keep an eye on them
5) the corruption of language after the Fall is shown through double-entendres in Adam and Eve's speeches
6) the War in Heaven is a mock-epic meant to show the superiority of Christian heroism over conventional epic poems / 'pagan' heroism
7) rereading Paradise Lost (and Milton's other texts) does a lot more to help your understanding of the poem than reading a book about it.
The fact that the chapters (more or less) follow the chronology of the poem and make it easier to read this alongside PL almost gained Fish an extra star, but then I remembered the appalling formatting of my edition.
1) Milton tries to educate the reader through PL by repeatedly 'tempting' them to misinterpret the poem then showing them how they're wrong through the epic voice or God's speeches
2) God has to be such a boring character because He was to be authoritative and fun rhetoric is not authoritative
3) the epic voice is not always reliable
4) Milton uses some words (e.g. 'fallen', 'wand'ring', etc) repeatedly very different contexts, it's useful to keep an eye on them
5) the corruption of language after the Fall is shown through double-entendres in Adam and Eve's speeches
6) the War in Heaven is a mock-epic meant to show the superiority of Christian heroism over conventional epic poems / 'pagan' heroism
7) rereading Paradise Lost (and Milton's other texts) does a lot more to help your understanding of the poem than reading a book about it.
The fact that the chapters (more or less) follow the chronology of the poem and make it easier to read this alongside PL almost gained Fish an extra star, but then I remembered the appalling formatting of my edition.
November 24, 2020
Talvez tenha sido o melhor livro de crítica literária q já li. Uma verdadeira aula de como ler e escrever sobre um livro.
May 23, 2021
This was the text for Fish's Milton class at Johns Hopkins. In it, he actually credits an undergrad student for an idea. One of the best classes I ever took. Fish really makes you think hard.
August 29, 2022
The technique is simple and familiar: Adam and Eve are shown acting and speaking in situations which at first encourage the reader to see in them qualities he recognizes as fallen; almost immediately, however, something in the text reminds him of the distance separating the first man from all others (save one) and he is asked to make a mental adjustment--not them, but me--which becomes the felt measurement of that distance, and thus the reality of innocence, in the poem; and he is also asked to judge himself against that reality. (Again the sequence: mistake--correction--instructions.)
from "More Carnal Responses
In Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, Stanley Fish responds to critics who accuse Milton of failing to elevate the source material with this epic. At first, Fish seems enamored of reader response theory and this short critical work, like so many of its ilk, will further the cause of a critical school rather than elucidate the text. But that's not the case: Fish builds a compelling case for how to approach his poem and how it functions. Fish delves deeply into the theological underpinnings of this work, noting how Milton's poem is designed to frustrate and enlighten the "fit" reader.
With Paradise Lost, the mindset we have when cracking its covers is critical. The poem is meant for Christians hoping to better understand the implications of that first taste of the forbidden fruit. If you only want poetry, or drama, or realism, or fantasy, or updated Dante--you're going to be disappointed. As Fish argues, Milton's method is to manipulate the reader, to demonstrate that the reader exists within a fallen world where events prior to the fall are difficult to properly understand or compartmentalize.
For anyone hoping to work their way through this epic, Fish is an excellent guide. At times he goes down a rabbit hole of critical theory--what critic doesn't from time to time?--but, in the end, he helps the reader to better understand and appreciate the poem.
from "More Carnal Responses
In Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, Stanley Fish responds to critics who accuse Milton of failing to elevate the source material with this epic. At first, Fish seems enamored of reader response theory and this short critical work, like so many of its ilk, will further the cause of a critical school rather than elucidate the text. But that's not the case: Fish builds a compelling case for how to approach his poem and how it functions. Fish delves deeply into the theological underpinnings of this work, noting how Milton's poem is designed to frustrate and enlighten the "fit" reader.
With Paradise Lost, the mindset we have when cracking its covers is critical. The poem is meant for Christians hoping to better understand the implications of that first taste of the forbidden fruit. If you only want poetry, or drama, or realism, or fantasy, or updated Dante--you're going to be disappointed. As Fish argues, Milton's method is to manipulate the reader, to demonstrate that the reader exists within a fallen world where events prior to the fall are difficult to properly understand or compartmentalize.
For anyone hoping to work their way through this epic, Fish is an excellent guide. At times he goes down a rabbit hole of critical theory--what critic doesn't from time to time?--but, in the end, he helps the reader to better understand and appreciate the poem.
December 12, 2007
Fishy stuff, this.
I just had the grand opportunity and great pleasure to quote from this book and do that always fun [sic]-ing thing. How pleasant to be arch with someone as arch as he.
Also: he was a rude customer and bad tipper. So nyah, nyah.
I just had the grand opportunity and great pleasure to quote from this book and do that always fun [sic]-ing thing. How pleasant to be arch with someone as arch as he.
Also: he was a rude customer and bad tipper. So nyah, nyah.
January 3, 2020
Descriptive language would probably fail me: I gave five stars to Fish's "How Milton Works" and this is simply better than that. It is perhaps the best work of sustained criticism I've ever come across.
If one is a Milton fan, one must know this book.
If one is a Milton fan, one must know this book.
April 25, 2007
Fish is the only person who has ever made me remotely interested in Milton.
January 23, 2024
genius mind!
March 24, 2025
Another seminal brain-changing read. Even Barbara Lewalski gave it credit.
Can't remember exactly when I read it.
Can't remember exactly when I read it.
Want to read
September 29, 2008So one of the things I discovered quite by accident, mainly due to Matthew Sweet's "Sick of Myself", was post-modernism.
Luckily enough, at the time, Slick Willy told us that "it depends on what the meaning of is is".
I also was following the "Sokal affair"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_af...
All in all, this kind of clicked with how the views of ideas such as Jefferson being a slave holder, the Pilgrims being nothing but invading honkies, and in general Western Civ was nothing to be proud of were all boiling up in the mid 90's, mainly through "multi-cultralism". That always seemed to me like code speak for 'Every other culture is better than yours', including Muslims that splash acid in the faces of women and stab knives through the hearts of writers that disagree with them.
I think 9/11 has exposed the hilarity of all that gobbley gook, but we're all still acting like sheep, going along with the idea that 90 year old white women need to be searched for bombs. That also jives with many discussions over the past few weeks that kids aren't "stupid" or "bad" anymore, they're just troubled or LD. Whatever.
But to the point. From what I understand, this book may actually be a bona fide effective use of "deconstruction" and if Harold Bloom says its ok to read, Im all in.
Luckily enough, at the time, Slick Willy told us that "it depends on what the meaning of is is".
I also was following the "Sokal affair"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_af...
All in all, this kind of clicked with how the views of ideas such as Jefferson being a slave holder, the Pilgrims being nothing but invading honkies, and in general Western Civ was nothing to be proud of were all boiling up in the mid 90's, mainly through "multi-cultralism". That always seemed to me like code speak for 'Every other culture is better than yours', including Muslims that splash acid in the faces of women and stab knives through the hearts of writers that disagree with them.
I think 9/11 has exposed the hilarity of all that gobbley gook, but we're all still acting like sheep, going along with the idea that 90 year old white women need to be searched for bombs. That also jives with many discussions over the past few weeks that kids aren't "stupid" or "bad" anymore, they're just troubled or LD. Whatever.
But to the point. From what I understand, this book may actually be a bona fide effective use of "deconstruction" and if Harold Bloom says its ok to read, Im all in.
February 25, 2016
I really enjoyed this. Fish leads the reader through a reading of Paradise Lost that shines light on the true nature of all reading and our own inability for perfection. In the end, his conclusions show us just what it means to be humans in a world where paradise has been lost.
July 21, 2007
I haven't read the whole book, but many excerpts. Fish is amazing.
May 25, 2010
Whether Fish is right or wrong, his theory of what Milton intended (in his desire to *educate* the English by his poems) gives me a glass through which to re-examine the poems.
December 24, 2016
A helpful secondary resource on Paradise Lost and the literary and rhetorical criticism surrounding the work. Fish provides many great insights into the heart of Milton's readers.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews