ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -“I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Creative genius, according to Keats, requires people to experience the world as an uncertain place that naturally gives rise to a wide array of perspectives.

Detailed explanation-2: -An author possessing negative capability is objective and emotionally detached, as opposed to one who writes for didactic purposes; a literary work possessing negative capability may have beauties and depths that make conventional considerations of truth and morality irrelevant.

Detailed explanation-3: -What does Keats mean by ‘negative capability’? Clearly, he is using the word ‘negative’ not in a pejorative sense, but to convey the idea that a person’s potential can be defined by what he or she does not possess – in this case a need to be clever, a determination to work everything out.

Detailed explanation-4: -Some examples of negative capability are: 1. 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.