Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives
In late December 1817, when attempting to name "what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature," John Keats coined the term "negative capability," which he glossed as "being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats's work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability's relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the "poetical Character" Keats notes that "it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated." This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.
1129871308
Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives
In late December 1817, when attempting to name "what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature," John Keats coined the term "negative capability," which he glossed as "being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats's work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability's relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the "poetical Character" Keats notes that "it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated." This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.
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Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives

Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives

Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives

Keats's Negative Capability: New Origins and Afterlives

Overview

In late December 1817, when attempting to name "what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature," John Keats coined the term "negative capability," which he glossed as "being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats's work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability's relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the "poetical Character" Keats notes that "it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated." This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781800856721
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Publication date: 10/01/2021
Series: Romantic Reconfigurations Studies in Literature and Culture 1780 1850 , #6
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Brian Rejack is Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University.
Michael Theune is Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures viii

Acknowledgments ix

List of Abbreviations xi

List of Contributors xiii

Preface Nicholas Roe xvii

Introduction: Disquisitions: Reading Negative Capability, 1817-2017 Brian Rejack Michael Theune 1

Part I 'Swelling into reality': New Contexts for Negative Capability

1 Keats's Negative Capability: On Pantomime and 'Irritable Reaching' Brian Bates 15

2 John Keats's Jeffrey's 'Negative Capability'; or, Accidentally Undermining Keats Brian Rejack 31

3 Keats's 'Negative Capability' and Hazlitt's 'Natural Capacity' Michael Theune 47

4 'That strong excepted soul': Nineteenth-Century Women Read Keats Carmen Faye Mathes 60

Part II 'Examplified throughout': Forms of Negatively Capable Reading

5 Negatively Capable Reading Cassandra Falke 79

6 Knowledge's 'gordian shape': Keats and the Disciplines Kurtis Hessel 93

7 'Irritable Reaching' and the Conditions of Romantic Mediation Jeanne Britton 108

8 'Uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts': Pluralities and the Historical Present in Keats and Hazlitt Emily Rohrbach 122

Part III 'pursued through Volumes', Volume I: Negative Capability in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry

9 Beyond the Great Divide: Negative Capability and Postwar American Poetics Robert Archambeau 139

10 Versions of Negative Capability in Modern American Poetry and Criticism Eric Eisner 154

11 'Giddily off into the unknown': Negative Capability and Naturalism in Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics Arsevi Seyran 171

12 'Darkling I listen': Jorie Graham and Negative Capability Thomas Gardner 184

Part IV 'Pursued through Volumes', Volume II: Adaptations, Appropriations, Mutations

13 Negative Capability in the Twenty-First Century and Romantic Self Annihilation in Philip Pullmans His Dark Materials Suzanne L. Barnett 203

14 Negative Capability in Psychoanalysis: Keats and Retroactive Judgment in Bion, Freud, Lacan, and Milner David Sigler 216

15 Zen and the Art of Negative Capability Anne C. McCarthy 232

16 Negative Capability in Dialogic Context Walter L. Reed 245

Afterword Reading Keats's Negative Capability Jonathan Mulrooney 259

Bibliography 263

Index 281

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