Uncertainty as a Method

“Negative Capability” and the Construction of Imagery Ambiguities in “La Belle Dame sans Merci”, by John Keats

Abstract

In the following pages, we explore the “rich set of ambiguities” in the poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats, starting with the presentation of the idea of “negative capability”, barely outlined by the poet, but with echoes in his poetry and reverberations in other times and places; passing through the figure of the Belle Dame sans Merci, its most accepted meanings, its essential ambiguity and some of its pictorial representation; ending in an exploratory conclusion, in which the notion outlined by Keats and practiced in his poetry may reflect its current relevance. It can be seen that John Keats works with ekphrasis in his poem with precision, highlighting its visuality, eliciting diverse reinterpretations in visual forms, so that we thus have a dialectic between the poetic image, full of constitutive uncertainties and pregnant with meanings, and the ekphrastic exercises derived from the poem over time. In this way, the exercise of “negative capacity” in the construction of the poem guarantees to the figures of the lady and the knight a symbolic opening that has been inspiring the pictorial imagination since the 19th century – as we see in the images read in the article.