Description
Book Synopsis'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 clarifies the meaning of the term and offers an anatomy of its key components, and provides an account of the history of this idea.
Trade Review"Elegantly written and cogently argued, this book puts the enigmatic term negative capability into clear focus for the first time and will immensely deepen our understanding of Keats' critical legacy in a way unattempted before. A brilliant tour de force to bring Keats' important concept back into scholarly debate and circulation." - Professor Zhang Longxi, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation, City University of Hong Kong and Foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities
"Li Ou has taken Keats's most treasured critical concept and given it new and vigorous life. Not only has she provided sensitive readings of Keats's own major poems; she has singled out King Lear for a detailed analysis which illuminates both the play itself and Keats's imaginative relationship to it. Finally, in an especially revelatory chapter, she looks at Yeats and Eliot and sees ways - some of them, I think, previously unnoticed - in which 'negative capability' informs those poets also. From first to last, Li Ou's book is carefully embedded in the best scholarship of her predecessors and in her own original and perceptive understanding of the poets." - Edwin G. Wilson, Provost Emeritus, Professor Emeritus of English, Wake Forest University, USA
"Li Ou has written an important and overdue book. The pendulum has swung too far: negative capability is a once-overused concept now in sore need of rehabilitation. She shows not only its vital importance in reading Keats but its considerable significance in the wider history of ideas. Well worth reading." - Simon Haines Professor of English, Chair of the Department of English, The Chinese, University of Hong Kong
Table of ContentsIntroduction: 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; Appendices: Keats's markings and marginalia in King Lear; Bibliography; Index.
