Fish, Chandler, Eagleton

            Fish, Chandler, and Eagleton all discuss how we can tell what genre a piece of literary work belongs to based on prior knowledge. If the piece contains bank robberies and certain mid-west phrases we can assume that this piece of literature is a western such as Lee K. Abbott’s Purpose of this creature man. In How to Recognize a poem When You See One, Fish mentions how he gave his second class which was an English religious poetry class; the same assignment that was given to the previous class about linguistics and literary criticism. The students took the names on the board and came up with an interpretation for the names in the “poem”. They took the name of Roderick Jacobs who coauthored textbooks and came up with the translation that his name was a reference to Jacob’s ladder. Fish mentions that because they had prior knowledge they were able to come up with meanings for the names on the board and tied them all together.

            Fish mentions that in a classroom, when a student raises his or her hand that this symbolizes that the student wants to answer a question. If you have never been in a classroom and have no prior knowledge of what goes on in a school then you would have a different idea about the students raised hand. Fish says that the raised hand could be seen as a muscle exercise, or an attempt to kill flies. In class we mentioned how pink is a girls color and blue is a boys color, and that we pair these colors with certain genders because of our prior knowledge. Its because of our prior knowledge that we can categorize certain objects or phrases with genres.