1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910959490503321

Autore

Ou Li

Titolo

Keats and negative capability / Li Ou

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; New York, : Continuum, 2009

ISBN

9781441101037

1441101039

9781474211468

1474211461

9781282453036

1282453033

9781441170910

144117091X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (223 p.)

Collana

Continuum literary studies series

Disciplina

821.7

Soggetti

English literature - History and criticism

Uncertainty in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [196]-202) and index

Nota di contenuto

Genealogy of negative capability -- King Lear and negative capability -- Negative capability and Keat's poetry -- Modernist heritage of negative capability -- The tradition of negative capability

Introduction: Anatomy of Negative Capability -- 1. Genealogy of Negative Capability -- 2. King Lear and Negative Capability -- 3. Negative Capability and Keats's Poetry -- 4. Modernist Heritage of Negative Capability -- Conclusion: The Tradition of Negative Capability  -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

"Negative capability", the term John Keats used only once in a letter to his brothers, is a well-known but surprisingly unexplored concept in literary criticism and aesthetics. This book is the first book-length study of this central concept in seventy years. As well as clarifying the meaning of the term and giving an anatomy of its key components, the book gives a full account of the history of this idea. It traces the narrative of how the phrase first became known and gradually gained



currency, and explores its primary sources in earlier writers, principally Shakespeare and William Hazlitt, and its chief Modernist successors, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Meanwhile, the term is also applied to Keats's own poetry, which manifests the evolution of the idea in Keats's poetic practice. Many of the comparative readings of the relevant texts, including King Lear, illuminate the interconnections between these major writers. The book is an original and significant piece of scholarship on this celebrated concept.