Reading with Feeling

Feagin develops a psychological model for understanding how one becomes emotionally engaged with something one knows is fictional.

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

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.

Rewarding.... There is much that is worthwile to ponder in this provocative book.

Alex Neill:

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.