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What Is Negative Capability

May 13, 2019

In today’s post I will talk about Negative Capability. In particular, I’ll try to answer the question, What is negative capability? There’s a reason I’ve used bold font. There’s also a reason I said that I’ll try to answer the question.

Honestly, few things in a literary context have troubled me more than negative capability. Can I give you a definition? Sure. That’s very easy. Let’s take the one offered by John Keats himself, who coined the term.

[S]everal things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.

The Letters of John Keats, ed. H E Rollins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
what is negative capability
Negative capability is about the search for aesthetic, rather than philosophical meaning.

Giving a simple definition is relatively easy. Understanding the repercussions, is an entirely different story. Let’s try to unpack this.

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Anapest Generator: a JavaScript Poem Maker

February 17, 2019

My JavaScript iambic pentameter generator is among the most popular articles on this blog. If you liked that, you’re gonna love today’s article. I decided to make an anapest generator with a rhyme! It’s a JavaScript poetry generator using an anapest, that is, a poem with anapestic meter.

anapest generator
Could the pen really write with the might of the sword?
(see what I did there?) 😉

An anapest, or anapestic meter, is a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. Perhaps the most famous example of an anapestic poem (also mentioned in my article on poetry) is Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib”.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

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Coincidence and Fate (excerpt from Self Versus Self)

November 14, 2018

Some time ago, I told you about my unpublished Self Versus Self project. It is a literary project comprised of a literary-fiction novel and a narrative poem. It will remain unpublished, at least for the foreseeable future, due to its experimental nature. Its central theme revolves around coincidence and fate, and whether one can avoid them, adapt to them, or manipulate them.

coincidence and fate

Parenthetically, those interested in a more academic treatise of the issue, can find a short excerpt in my article on Frankenstein.

In today’s article, I’m using an excerpt from the narrative poem to talk a bit about fate and coincidence. Interestingly enough, the story is true and indeed occurred to my own late grandfather, exactly as it is portrayed.

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