Kubla Khan (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- First Published: 1816
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Poetry or poets, Singing or singers, Creative process, Forests or forestry, Rivers or waterways, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Visions, epiphanies, or revelations, Caves
- Locales: Venice, Italy, China, Italy
The Poem
“Kubla Khan,” one of the most famous and most analyzed English poems, is a fifty-four-line lyric in three verse paragraphs. In the opening paragraph, the title character decrees that a “stately pleasure-dome” be built in Xanadu. Although numerous commentators have striven to find sources for the place names used here by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, there is no critical consensus about the origins or meanings of these names. The real-life Kubla Khan, a thirteenth century Mongolian general and statesman who conquered and unified China, lived in an elaborate residence...
[The entire page is 1561 words long]
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