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Negative capability

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Keats term for embracing uncertainty and mystery without reaching after fact and reason.

Detailed Definition
Negative capability, a term coined by John Keats, describes the poet’s capacity to embrace uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without insisting on rational explanation or philosophical certainty; it enables deep imaginative empathy and is essential to poetic creation, as seen in Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where truth and beauty coexist ambiguously.
Example
Example in poetry:
Negative capability, per Keats, is the ability to dwell in uncertainty: "I do not know if this bird sings for joy or pain— / and in that doubt, I find my own refrain."
Additional Notes
Negative capability: Keats’s term for the poet’s ability to dwell in uncertainty without “irritable reaching after fact”; essential for empathetic, open-ended poetry; opposes didacticism.
Other Meanings of “Negative capability”
Also Known As
Keatsian capability Uncertainty tolerance Ambiguity acceptance Mystery embrace
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