Dr. Fisher, an authority on medieval literature and the English language, was appointed to the John C. Hodges Professorship in English in 1972. He served as head of the English Department from 1976 to 1978. In 1979 he was named a Chancellor’s Research Scholar. Fisher wrote many essays in scholarly journals and authored or edited a number of volumes, including John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (1964); The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (1977, 2nd ed., 1988); and An Anthology of Chaucer (1984). He was executive secretary (1963–71) and president (1974) of the Modern Language Association; editor of PMLA (1963–71); and director (1982–89) and president (1982) of the Chaucer Society. He was elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1983 and served as president in 1987. In 1975 he held a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
He earned the BA from Maryville College and the PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and he taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, Indiana University, and New York University. Loyola University of Chicago and Middlebury College conferred honorary degrees upon him. His intellectual contributions to the life of the university have been recognized by placement of a plaque in his honor on a faculty study.