ENG 222 MIDTERM

Cocreation (Course’s Baseline)

Felski’s core argument that works of art do not possess fixed meaning on their own, instead, aesthetic experience is co-produced through the dynamic interaction between the text and the recipient’s attachment

Cocreation (General)

The process where meaning, aesthetic value, and experience are generated through a joint partnership between an artwork and its audience.

Distributed Agency

The idea that agency is not located solely inside human subjects or static objects, but is shared across networks of humans, texts, technologies, and environments that act on one another

Actor

Any participant—whether a reader, a poem, a novel, or a physical environment—that exerts force, makes a difference, or produces an effect in an aesthetic encounter

Attachment

The ties, connections, and bonds that draw individuals to particular works of art, shaping how texts hold power over us and influence our lives

Mediator

An entity (like a medium, translation, or setting) that actively alters and reshapes the aesthetic experience rather than passively conveying it

Mediation

the process by which attachments are transformed through intermediate forces

Aesthetic

The sensory, emotional, and perceptual qualities of an artwork that engage the reader or viewer

Aesthetic Experience

An intense, visceral encounter with art where a reader is gripped, moved, or “hooked” by a text in a specific moment of emotional response

ANT

A sociological framework that Felski uses to treat artworks and readers as interconnected nodes in social networks, avoiding rigid splits between “text” and “context”

Relations/Relationships

The continuous, shifting webs of connection formed between readers, texts, cultural histories, and material objects

Weak Evaluations

Simple preferences or desires (liking a text’s style)

Strong Evaluations

involve moral or qualitative judgements about what is meaningful, noble, or worth valuing in art

Second-order Evaluations

The reflective process of assessing our own preferences and attachments — evaluating why we are attached to certain works of art or whether those attachments align with our values

Attunement

A state of aesthetic receptivity and emotional responsiveness where a reader or viewer becomes sensitively aligned with the tone, rhythm, or mood of a work

Flat Ontology

The theoretical premise that humans, artworks, physical objects, and ideas exist on a single, hierarchical plane, allowing non-human entities (like books) to be recognized as active agents

Network

The extended web of human and non-human actors—including readers, critics, books, institutions, and media—that collectively sustain and shape aesthetic experiences

Presence

The palpable, immediate sense of a work of art confronting or inhabiting the reader’s immediate reality

Affinity

A fundamental point of likeness or common ground; in ANT-driven literary analysis, identification requires a single affinity between a character/person and the possessor of the attachment

Alignment Identification Attachment

A mode of attachment where the reader’s attention and perspective are aligned with a character by following their story, access to information, and path through the text

Allegiance Identification Attachment

A mode of attachment rooted in moral evaluation, where the reader feels loyal or drawn to a character because they approve of their ethical traits or values

Recognition Identification Attachment

A mode of attachment where a reader identifies with a character or text because they see a familiar aspect of themselves or their lived reality mirrored in it

Empathy Identification Attachment

A mode of attachment where a reader emotionally projects into a character’s internal state, feeling with or for them regardless of personal similarity