Negative Capability Negative capability is a phrase coined by John Keats to describe the poet’s ability to live with uncertainty and mystery. From A Poet’s Glossary The following definition of the term negative capability is reprinted from A Poet's Glossary by Edward Hirsch.
What does Keats mean by'man of negative capability'?
Keats' man of negative capability had qualities that enabled him to "lose his self-identity, his 'imaginative identification' with and submission to things, and his power to achieve a unity with life".
Why did Keats use the word negative in his poems?
And this capability depends on being negative to what Keats called 'Consequitive reasoning'. Another explanation of the word Negative relies on hypothesising that Keats was influenced in his studies of medicine and chemistry, and that it refers to the negative pole of an electric current which is passive and receptive.
What is the relationship between John Keats and his brothers?
Famously, one of the letters of John Keats makes mention of negative capability to his brothers George and Tom Keats, arguing against the pursuit of logic and reason in favor of a sense of beauty and wonder.
What does Keats mean by turn of phrase?
Keats: The poet's turn of phrase. In each case, Keats found a mind which was a narrow private path, not a "thoroughfare for all thoughts". Lacking for Keats were the central and indispensable qualities requisite for flexibility and openness to the world, or what he referred to as negative capability.
What is the meaning of negative capability by John Keats?
negative capability, a writer's ability, “which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” to accept “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” according to English poet John Keats, who first used the term in an 1817 letter.
What is negative capability in Ode to Nightingale?
Some examples of negative capability are: John Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale.” This poem deals with musings on mortality, containing no real solution on how to deal with the anxieties of impending death. This poem carries a darker tone, leading Keats to reject an optimistic viewpoint.
What is negative capability in psychology?
Abstract. It is proposed that negative capability, that is, the capacity for tolerating uncertainty, doubt and not-knowing, is a factor that contributes to a problem-solving approach utilizable in some aspects of the psychotherapeutic process. Negative capability can be demonstrated both in therapists and patients.
How do you apply negative capability in literature?
Negative capability gives the reader permission to sit back and enjoy the ride, and it can also give them an idea of what to expect from the rest of the work. If you don't make the attempt to explain all the details, the reader will subconsciously receive your permission to not worry about the hows or whys.
Who did Keats regard as the prime example of negative capability?
First among these men of genius, for Keats, was Shakespeare, who possessed negative capability 'so enormously'. When he was beginning his first long poem, Endymion, on the Isle of Wight in 1817, Keats imagined Shakespeare as the genius presiding over him.
Which of the poem describes kids journey into the negative capability?
“Ode to a nightingale” is a personal poem that describes keats' journey into the state of negative capability. We can find negative capability in ode to nightingale a poem written in 1819 and published in 1820.
What is negative capability in leadership?
Negative capability in the context of leadership Leaders may require negative capability in order to contain those aspects of a situation that are themselves 'negative', such as not knowing what to do, not having adequate resources, and not trusting or being trusted.
What is negative capability in social work?
I've become increasingly interested in negative capability, the state in which a person 'is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason'.
What is positive capability?
The positive capabilities involve the management of the substantive content of any change initiative, the change process itself, and the roles and procedures required by both of these. However, even when these three “technical” aspects are well managed, change always arouses anxiety and uncertainty.
What does Keats say about poetry?
Keats believed that a poem must strive for the infinite and that there is a real world of mortality and an ideal world of permanence. Poetry, he argued, made life permanent. In the end, Keats believed that a poet is a chameleon: A poet is "the most unpoetical thing in existence," he said.
What kind of poetry did John Keats write?
Romantic lyric poetJohn Keats was an English Romantic lyric poet whose verse is known for its vivid imagery and great sensuous appeal. His reputation grew after his early death, and he was greatly admired in the Victorian Age.
What does egotistical sublime mean?
According to the Romantic English poet John Keats (1795-1821), artists of fixed opinions suffered from “egotistical sublime,” obsessing over singular truths to the point that they were unable to produce characters and storylines that convincingly diverged from their personal world views.
What is the theme to Ode to a Nightingale?
The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems and, instead, explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being particularly relevant to Keats. The nightingale described experiences a type of death but does not actually die.
Do I wake or do I sleep Keats?
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
What is negative in Keats's theory?
Another explanation of the word Negative relies on hypothesising that Keats was influenced in his studies of medicine and chemistry, and that it refers to the negative pole of an electric current which is passive and receptive.
What is negative capability?
Negative capability is a phrase first used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817 to explain the capacity of the greatest writers (particularly Shakespeare) to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty.
What did Keats find in Coleridge?
Keats understood Coleridge as searching for a single, higher-order truth or solution to the mysteries of the natural world. He went on to find the same fault in Dilke and Wordsworth. All these poets, he claimed, lacked objectivity and universality in their view of the human condition and the natural world.
Why did Roberto Mangabeira Unger use the term "negative capability"?
For Unger, negative capability is the "denial of whatever in our contexts delivers us over to a fixed scheme of division and hierarchy and to an enforced choice between routine and rebellion.".
What is the lacking for Keats?
Lacking for Keats were the central and indispensable qualities requisite for flexibility and openness to the world, or what he referred to as negative capability. This concept of Negative Capability is precisely a rejection of set philosophies and preconceived systems of nature.
What is Stanley Fish's criticism of Unger?
He criticized Unger's early work as being unable to chart a route for the idea to pass into reality, which leaves history closed and the individual holding onto the concept while kicking against air. Fish finds the capability Unger invokes in his early works unimaginable and unmanufacturable that can only be expressed outright in blatant speech, or obliquely in concept. More generally, Fish finds the idea of radical culture as an oppositional ideal in which context is continuously refined or rejected impracticable at best, and impossible at worst. Unger has addressed these criticisms by developing a full theory of historical process in which negative capability is employed.
What is Keats's nightingale?
The implication is that Keats's nightingale is his alethiometer, whose truth, like the truth of poetry itself, is not amenable to any amount of vivisection.
What is negative capability?
Negative Capability. Negative capability is a phrase coined by John Keats to describe the poet’s ability to live with uncertainty and mystery.
What is Keats' ideal of disinterestedness?
Keats took to heart the ideal of “disinterestedness,” of Shakespeare’s essential selflessness, his capacity for anonymous shift-shaping. In a letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818), he describes the selfless receptivity he considers necessary for the deepest poetry.
Overview
Negative capability is a phrase first used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817 to explain the capacity of the greatest writers (particularly Shakespeare) to pursue a vision of artistic beauty even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability to perceive and recognise truths beyond the reach of consecutive reasoni…
Keats: The poet's turn of phrase
Keats used the phrase only briefly in a private letter, and it became known only after his correspondence was collected and published. In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, on 22 December 1817, Keats described a conversation he had been engaged in a few days previously:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, e…
Keats used the phrase only briefly in a private letter, and it became known only after his correspondence was collected and published. In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, on 22 December 1817, Keats described a conversation he had been engaged in a few days previously:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especiall…
Use of the word 'negative'
In the same way that chameleons are 'negative' for colour, Keatsian poets are negative for self and identity: they change their identity with each subject they inhabit. This is a kind of personal Tao, and like the cosmic Tao, negative capability can be difficult to grasp because it is not a name for a thing but rather a way of feeling or of knowing. This intuitive knowing of the inner life of, for example, a nightingale or a Grecian urn, cannot be grasped as a concept; as with Tao, it is know…
Contrasted with positive capability
When humans are presented with external stress, the autonomic nervous system provides them with a 'fight or flight' response. This seems like a binary choice, but Keats provides a third option. Fight or flight has been called positive capability, and teachers of mindfulness stress the importance of cultivating negative capability in order to overcome and provide an alternative to our routine reactions to stress. They point out that this teaches tolerance of uncertainty, and enri…
Importance
The sections below show that negative capability is not the exclusive preserve of poets, but can describe the pre-creative mood of any artist, scientist, or religious person. Negative capability is important as an explanation of how periods of indolence give rise to periods of creativity.
The competition (varieties of prepoetry)
Negative capability needs to be understood as just one of a number of moods that may compete in the poet's mind before the poem arrives—i.e. during the phase that may be called prepoetry, after the musical form of the same name which delights in 'uncertainties, mysteries, [and] doubts'. The only valid way to approach this subject is through the words of poets themselves, e.g.:
Emotion recollected in tranquility and wise passivity (e.g. Wordswoth) The systematic derangem…
Are its results fraudulent?
Autumn can be a pretty time of year; birdsong can sound nice; and an old Greek vase may briefly attract the attention of tourists meandering aimlessly around a museum, but Keats's great odes (to Autumn, to a Nightingale, and on a Grecian Urn) seem to exaggerate the beauty of these topics, and to go beyond the evidence. Nightingales' songs, for example, are a bit disappointing. If this unwarranted exaggeration is the result of having negative capability, maybe it is not such a goo…
Its miraculous nature
The above attempts to show how negative capability can inspire great poetry. It does not explain how this mood is then engendered in readers of that poetry. This is one of the miraculous features of Keats's poetry: miraculous in the sense that an engine would be miraculous if it took in a high-octane fuel and then produced more fuel of an even higher octane rather than exhaust. It is possible for a reader to listen to a great Ode, and to read an analysis of it, and still not be moved …