Nominated for the National Book Award 1973
Self-Consuming Artifacts
Th e Experience of SeGenteenth-Century Literature
By STANLEY E. FISH
Starting with Plato and Augustine, and then concentrating on works
by Donne, Bacon, Herbert, Bunyan, Burton, Browne and Milton,
Stanley Fish trains a powerful critical intelligence on the
experience
of reading. While exploring what happens within the reader while
receiving Bacon's
Essays
or },Iilton's
Th e .Reason of Church Gov–
e rnm ent
or other Renaiss,ince tex ts , Professor Fish defin es
a literary genre (self-consuming artifacts ), establishes its canon,
and offers a brilliant demonstration of a new method of literary
analysis.
"Self-Con suming Artifacts
is patently a major and provocative
book.
It
will surely ·be influential in the way we read not only the
authors discussed in it, but others. And it will direct rhetorical
analysis to other-both simpler and more complex-strands of
perception."-Stlldies
ill
Ellglish Literature
446 pages $12.50
Also hy Stanley
E.
Fish
Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost
".. . the livel ies t hook
Oil
~[ilton
since C. S. Lewis's li ttle
Preface to
P(/radise
Lnst "- Earl
~[iller
Paperhollnd
~3A.s
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley· Los Angeles· New York
