Commentary on Fiction: A Philosophical Analysis, by Catharine Abell; and Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind by Jonathan Gilmore

These two excellent books ask what it is for an audience to engage appropriately with a work of fiction. Catharine Abell argues a radical rethink of foundational questions about the nature of fictive communication. Our views are rather different and in what follows I argue, predictably, that the intentionalist approach I and others adopt is in good shape. I don't recognzse so basic a dispute with Jonathan Gilmore, who wants to understand the norms of imagining by comparing them with the norms that govern our responses to real things. My question will be whether imagination has been aligned with these other states in the right ways. © 2022 The Author(s).