Echoes of Uncertainty

This monograph employs John Keats’s concept of negative capability as a framework to revisit 18th-century fiction from a contemporary perspective. Negative capability, as articulated by Keats (1817), refers to the capacity to accept “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. Both in literature and life, negative capability can be understood as the capacity to remain at ease with uncertainty and confront and live with the ambiguities that shape our existence. This study offers insights into how literature reflects our ongoing struggles with uncertainty through the perspective inherent in Keatsian philosophy. By examining 18th-century fiction against the backdrop of negative capability, the study aims to broaden the use of Keats’s concept for uncovering new layers of meaning. It is hoped that this book will contribute to a greater appreciation of embracing ambiguity and complexity in human thinking and experience, especially in the Keatsian sense of how we might live with our doubts and mysteries without necessarily resolving them.