A Review of John Keats's Negative Capability

John Keats’s poetic idea of negative capability distinguishes him from other major Romantic poets. It prioritizes the poet’s contentment with uncertainties and half knowledge over his zealous striving for certitude and knowledge. This paper seeks to provide a review of the critical studies on Keats’s concept of negative capability, and attempts to propose that Keats’s negative capability bears a close resemblance with the Chinese philosophy of Taoism. In spite of many similarities in terms of their emphasis on the void and uncertainties, these two concepts dram inspirations from distinct cultural origins and therefore differ from each other in their connotations.

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