The Romantic Legacy of John Keats: "Negative Capability" in Harry Styles' Fine Line

Abstract

[eng] The purpose of this study is to find out the similarities and differences between the British pop singer, Harry Styles, and the British Romantic author, John Keats, through “Negative Capability,” an essential concept in the poetic theory of the latter. The singer's second album, Fine Line (2019), is being compared to Keats' Odes. The essay has been organised in the following way: the presence and evolution of uncertainties and doubts in Styles’ album, and its similarities to Keats’ in his Odes, and the criticism both authors received outside of their art; the mysteries displayed in their works, and the separation between the identities of both authors with the narrative voice; and finally, the quality of “Negative Capability” present in Keats and Styles. The analysis shows that Keats' Romantic quality of accepting the uncertainties of one's own thinking and rejecting the need for a definitive answer through logical thought can be seen reflected in Styles' Fine Line.