Presented as a contribution to the discussion on aesthetic stimulation, the role of imagination, and the identity of specific aesthetic stimuli and their relative intensity within a given microcontext, this paper proposes the application of biometric tests to monitor readers' physiological responses to selected literary texts as a precedent for collaboration between biometric research and aesthetically oriented literary criticism. The three sections of the paper deal with the following topics: (1) the biocybernetic approach to the information impact of a literary text, (2) aesthetic stimulations of a literary text from the biocybernetic viewpoint, and (3) the instrumentation and methodology of biocybernetic assessment. An extensive bibliography concludes the paper. (FL)