Negative Capability by John Keats || Negative Capability in Poetry || Keats as a Romantic Poet

 

John Keats and ‘Negative Capability’

Negative capability was a phrase first used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817. Keats was a pure romantic poet who never followed any set or established theories. He had his own vision of poetry.

Keats used the term ‘Negative Capability’ in a letter written in 1817 which was addressed to his brothers, George and Tom. Inspired by Shakespeare’s works, he used this term ‘Negative Capability’ as “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

·    Keats believed that the world could never be fully understood on specific parameters.

·    He believes that we are most likely to gain new insights if we stop assuming that we know everything.

·    He suggests that human beings are always more complex than we actually see or understand with our reason or intellect.

·    So, in short, he believed that the poet should always seek to express that “uncertainties, mysteries and doubts” in poetry without even trying to offer answers to these mysteries.

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