A Tale of Two Fishes

How Milton Works, by Stanley Fish (Harvard, 616 pp., $35)

Trumpeted by its publisher as the author’s “magnum opus” and “the definitive statement on Milton for our time,” How Milton Works raises both very high and very low expectations. Literary scholars, remembering that it was Stanley Fish’s 1967 book on Milton, Surprised by Sin, that catapulted him to the top of his profession, will expect a brilliant and sensitive exposition of Milton’s works. Culture warriors, aware of Fish’s prominence as a guru of postmodern subjectivism, will expect a tendentious reading of Milton in the service of the trendy ideologies that have done so much to subvert the life of the mind in recent years.

About the Author

Michael Potemra

Michael Potemra was a literary editor for National Review.

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How Milton Works, by Stanley Fish (Harvard, 616 pp., $35)

Trumpeted by its publisher as the author’s “magnum opus” and “the definitive statement on Milton for our time,” How Milton Works raises both very high and very low expectations. Literary scholars, remembering that it was Stanley Fish’s 1967 book on Milton, Surprised by Sin, that catapulted him to the top of his profession, will expect a brilliant and sensitive exposition of Milton’s works. Culture warriors, aware of Fish’s prominence as a guru of postmodern subjectivism, will expect a tendentious reading of Milton in the service of the trendy ideologies that have done so much to subvert the life of the mind in recent years.