ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The ‘egotistical sublime’ is a phrase coined by John Keats to describe the poetry of William Wordsworth in a 1818 letter to Richard Woodhouse. The phrase expresses the underlying self-centered nature of Wordsworth’s poetry, particularly his use of the narrative voice to convey his own conception of a singular truth.

Detailed explanation-2: -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.

Detailed explanation-3: -The “sublime” is the point where nature overpowers reason. The egotistical part comes in when poets would interpret everything that they saw in relation to themselves. For example, a poet would take a walk, see something beautiful, and wonder if people would remember them after they died.

Detailed explanation-4: -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.

Detailed explanation-5: -Poetry ‘as consolation for the afflictions of life’ was exactly what Keats had been thinking about even before he had arrived in Southwark. Here, in Wordsworth, Keats was discovering a kindred spirit, a poet with the depth and gravity that Keats himself aspired to.