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...

Maura Del Serra is a poet, playwright, translator, and essayist whose work is highly regarded in Italy and Europe where it has garnered numerous accolades. Following her anthology Coral (1994) and the critically acclaimed collections of poetry L'opera del vento (2006) and Tentativi di certezza (2010), Ladder of Oaths contains poems and other texts Del Serra composed between 2010 and 2015.

Ladder of Oaths further develops and enriches the author's ars poetica -- while rooted in classical Western & Eastern traditions, Del...