“Negative Capability”: Imagination in Ode to a Nightingale

Abstract

Keats was one of the most famous English Romantic poets of the 19th century. Although he had a difficult life and died young, Keats still produced many unsurpassed works in his short life, and even today, his achievements shine like a star in the world of poetry. In addition to his poetic achievements, Keats also put forward many aesthetic ideas, and this essay will focus on the concept of “Negative Capability”, which requires that the poet should extinguish his inherent consciousness and empty himself, and be comfortable in difficult situations and negative emotions and not be anxious to find answers and reasons, which is the best way to release his imagination. The “Negative Capacity” is one of Keats’s most widely known aesthetic theories, which fully reflects his profound thoughts on truth and beauty and his pursuit of the capacity to be a poet. In order to analyze and deconstruct this concept more specifically, this paper will take Ode to a Nightingale as an example and explore the deeper meaning and application of “Negative Capability” while analyzing the poem. This paper concludes that Keats’s pursuit of “Negative Capability” is perfectly reflected in Ode to a Nightingale - he lets his imagination go free by emptying himself and uses a lot of rhetorical techniques to show his lament for the fickleness of life and his pursuit of eternal joy. The ode to the nightingale is a perfect embodiment of this.