English Explanatory Dictionary

negative capability

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. The capacity of artists to pursue ideals of beauty, perfection and sublimity even when it leads them into intellectual confusion and uncertainty, as opposed to a preference for philosophical certainty over artistic beauty.

Word forms

negative capability negative capabilities

Etymology

Coined by John Keats in an 1817 letter.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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