Stanley’s Fish’s “How to recognize a Poem ‘and Chandler’s “Genre theories” is about how the reader’s mentally distinguished different types of works or genres by social and cultural patterns that we see in our everyday lives.
Fish did ‘nt really explain how to recognize a poem, but how we mentally interpret a form of literature from experiences. In his essay he explains how he taught two classes at the University of New York. He stated that the only similarity of the two was a specific assignment given to both classes. Fish had written the assignment on the blackboard and a list of names. He informed the class that it was a religious poem, like the one’s they have been doing in class. What Fish realized was that the class interpreted the poem to symbols that they recognized from their previous classes, this gives us the understanding that text can be interpreted easily when they have a source of information.
Chandler‘s essay is about how genre is framework that is design to make sense of literature or text. Chandler also expresses that schema is a “mental template within which to make sense of related experiences in everyday life”. He simply wants us to understand that readers learn genre gradually from familiarization.
Fish and Chandler’s points of view are similar to one another in which that the reader interprets literature through past experiences. Fish gives us an example of this in his essay when Mr. Newlin raises his hand to ask a question. Fish then turns to the entire class and asks what Mr. Newlin is doing, they reply by saying that he wants permission to speak and ask a question. Although he could not remember where this behavior was learned, he still knows that he needed to raise his hand in class. A simple gesture of covering your mouth when you sneeze ,is another perfect example on how people learn to behave a certain way through a basis of knowledge.
ALEJANDRA PORTILLO
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2 comments:
I thought that you touched upon the main ideas of the readings, but you could have gone in more depth. The addition of more quotes would have helped. Your post seemed short. It also seemed as if you didn't reread your work.
What Fish was saying was that a poem is a poem because we interpret it that way. The class managed to interpret a list of names as a religious poem because they attacked it with the expectation that it truly was a religious poem, and a schema of what a religious poem should relay. Fish best explains the differences between an assignment and a poem: "a result of the different interpretive operations we perform and not of something inherent in one or the other." It's our recognition of a poem that makes it such, just as much as the author's intent.
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