All Ye Need to Know.
Okay, this is my paper I wrote for my Lit class. It is due tomorrow at 2pm. I already had my professor look at it, and I'm bringing it into the Writing Center today for a tutorial. If anyone would be so kind, I would love another set of eyes to look over it and tell me if it makes sense or not. My professor said something like, "This is too vague and general, you need to narrow it down quite a bit" so I really tried to do that. I don't know if I succeeded or not. I could write for pages and pages on this topic - but I only have 6 pages to spend. Anyway, it's kind of... boring, I know... but I'd really appreciate it. Sometimes I spend so much time with my own work it starts to all look bad no matter what I do with it - that's how I feel right now. Bleh.
Sorry it is a crappy paper.
All Ye Need to Know: The New Truth of Negative Capability
The Romantic poet John Keats made this seemingly abstract claim: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”(Keats 883). Keats would suggest that many of life’s eternally important questions have no concrete answers. In his theory Negative Capability, Keats outlines a poetic vision for understanding existence, particularly specific to the Romantic Age. His theory invites the existence of mystery and uncertainty while excusing the arguments of logic, fact, and reason. He argued that great minds have the capability to remain negative and unresolved on the specifics of ethereal subjects such as beauty, truth, and art. This theory can be better explained through tracing its historical origin and studying its use within Romantic poetry. This theory, coupled with the artistic developments of poetry of the time, defines a new truth: the significance of beauty as a source of legitimate authority.
The predecessors to Keats’ theory provide a stark opposite to Negative Capability that allow for comparison. It is easier to define a theory by examining its counterpart. The disciples of the Enlightenment, the precursor to Romanticism, had written poetry as “an echo to the sense”, cultivated science and reason, and followed logical tradition zealously (Pope). After the French Revolution in 1789, a breath of fresh ideas swept across Europe. To many Europeans, the Revolution was an emblematic signal that the traditional ways and modes of thought were losing ground. What Enlightenment thinkers such as Edmund Burke failed to see was that their adherence to “permanent reason” was stifling artistic growth (Burke). Their staunch religion of logic enforced the idea that truth may only be defined in terms of factual evidence. The great minds of the Enlightenment felt that without reason to reinforce their artistic ideas, there is an absence of truth. The Romantics, however, truly felt differently.
The Romantic Age began, in part, as a revolt against these artistic norms. It was time to start afresh. As the Romantic poet Robert Southey remembered, “a visionary world seemed to open… Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race” (“The Romantics…” 11). Traditional adherence to logic and reason ate away at the social progress of the nation. It was time to “grub it up” (Wollstonecraft 78). Romantics such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey began to see the imagination as the critical authority, with emotion as the means of understanding and expressing ideas about existence. This was a fresh understanding of truth: as artistic beauty stirs an emotional reaction, the need to incorporate logic is nonexistent. As long as art elicits an emotional response - fact is unnecessary. In his letter to his brothers George and Thomas, Keats described this new truth as the capability of man to exist “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (“Letter to George and Thomas Keats…”). Truth can be discovered through the simple beauty of art, not only by its appeal to reason. This was truly the development of the age. While none of the Romantic poets went as far as to turn this rejection of logic into a concrete theory, they did set the pieces in motion for John Keats, who would turn out his theory almost twenty years later. His theory would later symbolize the progressive movement of the Romantic Age, and a new understanding of truth.
John Keats first proposed Negative Capability in a letter written to his brothers George and Thomas on the 21st of December in 1817. Through his poetry, Keats defined Negative Capability and, indeed, defined Romanticism itself. In his poem, Ode to a Nightingale, Keats breaks away from conventional reason and uses language to explore artistic contradiction. In the opening, as Keats describes his emotional state, a “drowsy numbness pains” his senses (Keats 879). This contradiction - numbness causing pain - takes a severe step away from logic to describe and elicit a purely emotional experience. Keats intends us to identify with the feeling described and let the illogical nature of the phrase slip by unresolved. Negative Capability allows it to remain that way, unfettered by logical restraints and given the right of self-contradiction without complaint. This idea was indeed essential to Romanticism. The poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge follows no sense of reason or fact. In this poem, Coleridge relates his surreal encounter with a musically inclined “Abyssinian maid” in an opium-induced vision. The poem leaves off in an imaginary dome of ice while the narrator unsuccessfully tries to recall the experience to his mind (Coleridge). The poem ends unresolved - a state where Negative Capability is required of the reader. In order to reconcile the unfinished encounter with the reader’s sense of artistic acceptance, there must be a certain liberal capability to leave some pieces of the poem unanswered. The poem should be appreciated for its beauty and the music of the imagination - not for its sense of resolution. The images described in this poem create a sense of wonder and mystery yet do not follow any system of logic. Keats would argue that this is the way in which truth is understood - by the emotional reaction of the human being. Emotions - educed by beautiful phrases and images - are truth within themselves. This is the true definition of Negative Capability - the ability to remain undefined, unresolved, and mysteriously abstract. The experience of emotion comes through artistic beauty, and truth grows up through that experience. This is the essence of Romantic poetry - to accept beauty as truth.
Perhaps one of the greatest examples of Negative Capability appears in Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the poem, Keats describes an encounter similar to the drug-inspired dream of Samuel Coleridge. It is the story of a young knight who has been deserted by a beautiful and captivating young maid after a brief and exhilarating tryst in the woods. He is left to mourn on a hillside “alone and palely loitering, /…/ And no birds sing” (Keats 376). The maid can be recognized as a symbol of the poet’s experience with beauty and truth - an abstract encounter yet emotionally genuine in the same vein. Keats would have us take beauty as it is - inexplicable yet undeniably real. This is what he means when he says “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” - that the emotional experience of beauty is the only true experience man needs to understand his own existence. Yet beauty itself does not answer to any specific logical guidelines or factual boundaries, much like the fleeting encounter with the young and beautiful maid. It is just as intangible, yet it should still be felt deeply and earnestly sought after. This falls neatly into his theory of Negative Capability - the individual basking in emotion rather than reason. Keats means his audience to live a life “of sensations rather than of Thoughts!” (“Letter to Benjamin Bailey…”). This adherence to sentiment over sense is quintessentially Romantic. The poets of the Romantic era had a certain affinity for beauty and it’s realization through poetry. Wordsworth and his “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, Coleridge and his opiate encounter, and Keats’ metaphorical portrayals of beauty - they share the same philosophy about emotions, imagination, and beauty (Wordsworth 357). Keats was able to define this shared understanding of art and existence in his theory, Negative Capability, for they all shared the same ability to dismiss fact in favor of feeling.
In a letter to Benjamin Bailey, John Keats once asserted for himself: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination - that the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth” (“Letter to Benjamin Bailey…”). This claim truly defines the core of Romanticism. Negative Capability is the ability to forsake logic and accept the experience of truth through beauty. The Romantics sought after truth through the beauty of their poetry. They chased after maidens, camped in imaginary domes, and soaked their words emotional recollection and the language of the imagination. They suspended logic, reason, and fact to understand the truth found within the scope of pure emotion. They revealed a new sense of truth that had so far escaped discovery. Through his theory, Keats gives the ability to express the Romantic connection of beauty to truth. Beauty is truth - and truth beauty - that is all ye need know.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. "Reflections on the French Revolution." The Harvard Classics. Bartleby. Complete Works of Edmund Burke. 30 Nov 2005 .
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Khan." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 546-547.
"John Keats' Negative Capability." Online posting. 19 September 2002. The Guide to Life, The Universe and Everything. 30 Nov 2005. .
Keats, John.
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”875-876.
“Ode to a Nightingale.” 879-881.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn.” 882-883.
The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003.
"Letter to Benjamin Bailey 22 September 1817." John-Keats.com. 30 Nov. 2005 .
"Letter to George and Thomas Keats 21 December 1817." John-Keats.com. 30 Nov. 2005 .
Pope, Alexander. “An Essay on Criticism.” The Harvard Classics. Bartleby. Complete Works of Alexander Pope. 30 Nov 2005 .
“The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 3-29.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “from A Vindication of the Rights of Men.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 76-84.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 356-362.
Sorry it is a crappy paper.
All Ye Need to Know: The New Truth of Negative Capability
The Romantic poet John Keats made this seemingly abstract claim: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”(Keats 883). Keats would suggest that many of life’s eternally important questions have no concrete answers. In his theory Negative Capability, Keats outlines a poetic vision for understanding existence, particularly specific to the Romantic Age. His theory invites the existence of mystery and uncertainty while excusing the arguments of logic, fact, and reason. He argued that great minds have the capability to remain negative and unresolved on the specifics of ethereal subjects such as beauty, truth, and art. This theory can be better explained through tracing its historical origin and studying its use within Romantic poetry. This theory, coupled with the artistic developments of poetry of the time, defines a new truth: the significance of beauty as a source of legitimate authority.
The predecessors to Keats’ theory provide a stark opposite to Negative Capability that allow for comparison. It is easier to define a theory by examining its counterpart. The disciples of the Enlightenment, the precursor to Romanticism, had written poetry as “an echo to the sense”, cultivated science and reason, and followed logical tradition zealously (Pope). After the French Revolution in 1789, a breath of fresh ideas swept across Europe. To many Europeans, the Revolution was an emblematic signal that the traditional ways and modes of thought were losing ground. What Enlightenment thinkers such as Edmund Burke failed to see was that their adherence to “permanent reason” was stifling artistic growth (Burke). Their staunch religion of logic enforced the idea that truth may only be defined in terms of factual evidence. The great minds of the Enlightenment felt that without reason to reinforce their artistic ideas, there is an absence of truth. The Romantics, however, truly felt differently.
The Romantic Age began, in part, as a revolt against these artistic norms. It was time to start afresh. As the Romantic poet Robert Southey remembered, “a visionary world seemed to open… Old things seemed passing away, and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race” (“The Romantics…” 11). Traditional adherence to logic and reason ate away at the social progress of the nation. It was time to “grub it up” (Wollstonecraft 78). Romantics such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey began to see the imagination as the critical authority, with emotion as the means of understanding and expressing ideas about existence. This was a fresh understanding of truth: as artistic beauty stirs an emotional reaction, the need to incorporate logic is nonexistent. As long as art elicits an emotional response - fact is unnecessary. In his letter to his brothers George and Thomas, Keats described this new truth as the capability of man to exist “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (“Letter to George and Thomas Keats…”). Truth can be discovered through the simple beauty of art, not only by its appeal to reason. This was truly the development of the age. While none of the Romantic poets went as far as to turn this rejection of logic into a concrete theory, they did set the pieces in motion for John Keats, who would turn out his theory almost twenty years later. His theory would later symbolize the progressive movement of the Romantic Age, and a new understanding of truth.
John Keats first proposed Negative Capability in a letter written to his brothers George and Thomas on the 21st of December in 1817. Through his poetry, Keats defined Negative Capability and, indeed, defined Romanticism itself. In his poem, Ode to a Nightingale, Keats breaks away from conventional reason and uses language to explore artistic contradiction. In the opening, as Keats describes his emotional state, a “drowsy numbness pains” his senses (Keats 879). This contradiction - numbness causing pain - takes a severe step away from logic to describe and elicit a purely emotional experience. Keats intends us to identify with the feeling described and let the illogical nature of the phrase slip by unresolved. Negative Capability allows it to remain that way, unfettered by logical restraints and given the right of self-contradiction without complaint. This idea was indeed essential to Romanticism. The poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge follows no sense of reason or fact. In this poem, Coleridge relates his surreal encounter with a musically inclined “Abyssinian maid” in an opium-induced vision. The poem leaves off in an imaginary dome of ice while the narrator unsuccessfully tries to recall the experience to his mind (Coleridge). The poem ends unresolved - a state where Negative Capability is required of the reader. In order to reconcile the unfinished encounter with the reader’s sense of artistic acceptance, there must be a certain liberal capability to leave some pieces of the poem unanswered. The poem should be appreciated for its beauty and the music of the imagination - not for its sense of resolution. The images described in this poem create a sense of wonder and mystery yet do not follow any system of logic. Keats would argue that this is the way in which truth is understood - by the emotional reaction of the human being. Emotions - educed by beautiful phrases and images - are truth within themselves. This is the true definition of Negative Capability - the ability to remain undefined, unresolved, and mysteriously abstract. The experience of emotion comes through artistic beauty, and truth grows up through that experience. This is the essence of Romantic poetry - to accept beauty as truth.
Perhaps one of the greatest examples of Negative Capability appears in Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In the poem, Keats describes an encounter similar to the drug-inspired dream of Samuel Coleridge. It is the story of a young knight who has been deserted by a beautiful and captivating young maid after a brief and exhilarating tryst in the woods. He is left to mourn on a hillside “alone and palely loitering, /…/ And no birds sing” (Keats 376). The maid can be recognized as a symbol of the poet’s experience with beauty and truth - an abstract encounter yet emotionally genuine in the same vein. Keats would have us take beauty as it is - inexplicable yet undeniably real. This is what he means when he says “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” - that the emotional experience of beauty is the only true experience man needs to understand his own existence. Yet beauty itself does not answer to any specific logical guidelines or factual boundaries, much like the fleeting encounter with the young and beautiful maid. It is just as intangible, yet it should still be felt deeply and earnestly sought after. This falls neatly into his theory of Negative Capability - the individual basking in emotion rather than reason. Keats means his audience to live a life “of sensations rather than of Thoughts!” (“Letter to Benjamin Bailey…”). This adherence to sentiment over sense is quintessentially Romantic. The poets of the Romantic era had a certain affinity for beauty and it’s realization through poetry. Wordsworth and his “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”, Coleridge and his opiate encounter, and Keats’ metaphorical portrayals of beauty - they share the same philosophy about emotions, imagination, and beauty (Wordsworth 357). Keats was able to define this shared understanding of art and existence in his theory, Negative Capability, for they all shared the same ability to dismiss fact in favor of feeling.
In a letter to Benjamin Bailey, John Keats once asserted for himself: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination - that the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth” (“Letter to Benjamin Bailey…”). This claim truly defines the core of Romanticism. Negative Capability is the ability to forsake logic and accept the experience of truth through beauty. The Romantics sought after truth through the beauty of their poetry. They chased after maidens, camped in imaginary domes, and soaked their words emotional recollection and the language of the imagination. They suspended logic, reason, and fact to understand the truth found within the scope of pure emotion. They revealed a new sense of truth that had so far escaped discovery. Through his theory, Keats gives the ability to express the Romantic connection of beauty to truth. Beauty is truth - and truth beauty - that is all ye need know.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. "Reflections on the French Revolution." The Harvard Classics. Bartleby. Complete Works of Edmund Burke. 30 Nov 2005 .
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Khan." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 546-547.
"John Keats' Negative Capability." Online posting. 19 September 2002. The Guide to Life, The Universe and Everything. 30 Nov 2005. .
Keats, John.
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”875-876.
“Ode to a Nightingale.” 879-881.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn.” 882-883.
The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003.
"Letter to Benjamin Bailey 22 September 1817." John-Keats.com. 30 Nov. 2005 .
"Letter to George and Thomas Keats 21 December 1817." John-Keats.com. 30 Nov. 2005 .
Pope, Alexander. “An Essay on Criticism.” The Harvard Classics. Bartleby. Complete Works of Alexander Pope. 30 Nov 2005 .
“The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 3-29.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “from A Vindication of the Rights of Men.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 76-84.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison-Wesey Educational Publishers, 2003. 356-362.