Keats 'When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be And'

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Negative Capability According to John Keats, negative capability is ability to simultaneuosly reflect on the world through two contradictory ideas, without factoring that one of them is true and false. Keats’ “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to be” and “Ode to a Nightingale” will be used to examine how negative capability plays into these poems. Also in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”, he becomes objective as he focuses his personal life out of the poem by establishing an “identity” that could be anyone but himself. Keats’ “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to be” sets an example of how negative capability allows him to create a reflection on the world and ambiguities of life without the pursuance of making sense of it all. In the first stanza, Keats’ …show more content…

Specifically, he makes an allusion to the nightingale through the disorientation he feels from listening to it. In stanzas 1 and 2, he talks about the “heart aches…drowsy numbness pains” as if he was “drunk”. Also in stanzas 25 and 30, Keats provides a vivid imagery of the scenery to allow the reader to picture the nightingale’s actions. For instance, in stanzas 60-69 Keats talks about collaborating with the nightingale at night. Specifically, the idea of being deep in the forest, whereas the flowers and plants are distant but able to smell from afar makes him ponder about the idea of dying into the nightingale singing and darkness a suitable idea. In Keats’ letter to Richard Woodhouse in 1818 he mentions that “…it is not itself, it has no self, it is everything and nothing, it has no character”. This quotation correlates with the “Ode to a nightingale” because Keats is able to keep his personal life out of this poem by establishing an identity that could be anyone but himself. It can be also interpreted as negative capability as everything and nothing both contradict against each other within the concept of

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