(Q906597)

English

negative capability

a trait of great writers

In more languages

edit

Statements

instance of

ability

1 reference

stated in

Encyclopædia Britannica

reference URL

https://www.britannica.com/art/negative-capability

quotation

negative capability, a writer’s ability, “which Shakespeare possessed so enormously,” to accept “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason,” according to English poet John Keats, who first used the term in an 1817 letter. (English)