This study, first published in 1945, gives a precise description of the unfolding of a great poet's craftsmanship and suggests alignments of the technical progression with the changes of the mind. Metrical analysis is given in order to throw light on Keats' general stylistic development using the simplest terminology and in a traditional manner. Earlier English prosodic writings are referred to throughout in order to place the style and development in the context of the period. Arranged chronologically, each chapter looks at a particular work or group of works drawing together evidence about Keats' poetic direction. This classic work from a well-known Keats scholar is an important enlightening contribution within the extensive study of Keats' poetry and letters.

This study, first published in 1945, gives a precise description of the unfolding of a great poet's craftsmanship and suggests alignments of the technical progression with the changes of the mind. Metrical analysis is given in order to throw light on Keats' general stylistic development using the simplest terminology and in a traditional manner. Earlier English prosodic writings are referred to throughout in order to place the style and development in the context of the period. Arranged chronologically, each chapter looks at a particular work or group of works drawing together evidence about Keats' poetic direction. This classic work from a well-known Keats scholar is an important enlightening contribution within the extensive study of Keats' poetry and letters.

Walter Jackson Bate's canonical 1939 study of Keats's concept of negative capability is a genealogical treatise that unearths the socio-political, aesthetic, and intellectual composition of Keats's most famous poetic idea. He discloses its relation to Hazlitt's idea of "gusto" and to Shakespearean notions of impersonality and intensity while also demonstrating how negative capability presages Bergson's conceptual interpretation of intellect and intuition. Bate reveals how the key elements of Keats's poetic concept are disinterestedness, sympathy, impersonality, and dramatic poetry, defining negative capability as "the ability to negate or lose one's identity in something larger than oneself - a sympathetic openness to the concrete reality without, an imaginative identification, a relishing and understanding of it." With 'negative capability, ' Keats railed against the rampant egotism of his epoch and challenged the certainty of its claims to knowledge. While embracing reality, Keats urged the necessity of abiding in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts. This new edition brings back into print Bate's indispensable work and features an introduction by the distinguished Italian poet, playwright, and literary critic Maura Del Serra. With its republication, Eliot's proclamation on Keats is given new force: that "there is hardly one statement of Keats about poetry which ... will not be found to be true..."