Reading with Feeling

Feelings and other affective responses to a work of fiction are an important part appreciation and the capacity to inspire such responses is part of what is valuable about literary works of art. Susan L. Feagin's philosophical exploration of appreciation, focusing specifically on its emotional or affective components, asks us to consider aesthetic appreciation as getting the value out of the work.Appreciation involves exercising abilities. Feagin develops a psychological model for understanding how one becomes emotionally engaged with something one knows is fictional. She stresses the importance of the role of imagination in producing affective responses.Imagination is harnessed by the writer's choice of phrase or depiction of detail. Feagin cites the work of Angela Carter, Molly Keane, Heinrich Böll, Gabriel Garçia Marquez, and draws an extended example from Henry James. She notes that not all responses to a work are relevant or appropriate and discusses a variety of ways responses may be assessed. Even though assessing responses can stifle imagination, and hence threaten spontaneity and the responses themselves, the value of having affective responses to fiction depends upon our being able to make such assessments. Whatever else we may gain, appreciating a work, getting the value out of it, is one means of extending the capacities of our own imaginations.

Susan Feagan's closely and carefully argued book... represents a distinctive and significant contribution.... Valuable, thoughtful, and closely argued,... Reading with Feeling is a work that no one who is interested in the roles played by affective response in out understanding and appreciation of works of art can afford to ignore., Rewarding.... There is much that is worthwile to ponder in this provocative book., This important book will be a benchmark for future discussions of the topic.... The clarity of its presentation, its agreeable lightness of tone, and the carefulness and detail of its arguments make the book a model for philosophical theorizing, whether about emotions or about literature.... The importance to aesthetics of Reading with Feeling lies... in the thorough grounding it provides for the very idea of emotional response. That is no mean achievement. Philosophers of mind, as well as aestheticians, could learn much from it.

Susan L. Feagin is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.