Kubla Khan

A simple answer to how it is a romantic poem is to state the poem is written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He, along with William Wordsworth, is one of the most famous Romantic authors. He and...

As other educators have pointed out, Coleridge’s poem is an example of Romatic poetry. As such, its primary function is to evoke an emotional response from its reader, which Coleridge accomplishes...

There has been lots of critical discussion about the precise "meaning" of this amazing poem. Some have suggests that this poem is all about the act of creation and imagination, as expressed in the...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge subtitled "Kubla Khan" as "A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment." In his prefatory note, he describes the circumstances under which he composed it. He had been reading about...

We assume the narrator is referring to himself. The narrator has had the "milk of paradise." The narrator then points out the all of his observers will "close their eyes 'with holy...

In those lines and elsewhere in the poem, we're meant to imagine a strange and lush landscape, an otherworldly one in which the very ground seems to pant exuberantly. For that reason, it's...

The poem explores a dream-vision of the "Orient." The "Orient," as Edward Said explained in his book Orientalism, is a Western construct in which the West, among other things, projects its own...

In "Kubla Khan," Coleridge describes two types of imagination. First, there is the ordinary imagination of the average person, who, in the first stanza, conjures up pleasant images of incense,...

The "mighty fountain" the narrator of "Kubla Khan" imagines most fully describes the creative process in this poem: And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast...

The title of the poem, the alliterative name of a Chinese ruler, immediately establishes a connection with the Orient. As Edward Said argued in his book Orientalism, in the eyes of the western...

It is generally believed that Coleridge wrote the poem under the influence of opium. He didn't take this highly addictive drug to inspire some poetic dream vision, but for the more mundane reason...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, like many other artists and writers of his generation, used, and may have been addicted to, laudanum, a solution of opium. Quite possibly under its influence, Coleridge had...

Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is an allegory of the creative process that bubbles up beneath the surface inside those people who have been touched by the deeper creative and imaginative muse of poetic...

Alliteration involves the repetition of initial sounds of words. Examples include the name "Kubla Khan," as well as "sunless sea," and "sunny spots." Later examples include "cedarn cover," "miles...

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a poem in which the speaker has a vision primarily of a mystical place called Xanadu, the "pleasure dome" of the ruthless warrior, Kubla Khan. Because the...

Many argue that this is actually a poem about artistic creation, and that the creation of the "pleasure dome" is a thinly-veiled allegory of the creation of art and poetry itself. Note how the poem...

The rhyme scheme of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” is highly irregular and unpredictable and follows no obvious pattern. Consider, for example, the first thirty-six lines of the poem,...

"Kubla Khan" is a sensory-rich poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In first stanza, the poem appeals to both sight and feeling by describing a "sunless sea." The reader knows it is not only...

Coleridge’s poem is incomplete, not incoherent. That is, the form of the poem we have is not the complete text Coleridge famously dreamed under the influence of opium in 1797. According to...

In the Biographia Litteraria, Coleridge split the mind into two parts, which he called the Imagination and the Fancy. He then subdivided the imagination. As he writes: The IMAGINATION then, I...

The numerous oxymorons that Samuel Taylor Coleridge employs in "Kubla Khan" emphasize the distinction between the terrestrial or mundane realms and the sacred realms (both heavenly and infernal)....

Coleridge's "Kubla Khan: A Vision," composed in 1797 and first published in 1816, is in the form of a dream vision that Coleridge himself once described as a "psychological curiosity." Some critics...

One key characteristic of Romantic poetry is the celebration of the imagination. Romantic poetry also often describes the power of the natural world and celebrates the sensual as more vital than...

Though I can't write the essay for you, I can give you ideas about what you should focus on. First of all, you should note that, while Coleridge is writing a poem about an exotic location, he's...

In my opinion, "Kubla Khan" celebrates the imagination, especially the imagination of the poetic genius. The poem takes us on a journey from the ordinary imagination to the powerful, prophetic...

You unfortunately asked multiple questions which is against enotes regulations, so I have been forced to edit your question down to focus on the treatment of nature in this unforgettable poem....

"Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a poem about the summer city of Xanadu (Shangdu). Coleridge was inspired to write the poem after an experience with opium, as well as his reading of...

Pictorial qualities, in regard to literature, is otherwise known as imagery. Imagery is the use of the author's language meant to allow a reader to create a mental image of what is being described....

Marianne Moore famously stated that poetry was composed of 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them`. Like Moore`s imaginary garden or Tennyson`s Palace of Art, the pleasure dome of Kubla Khan...

This poem was actually the result of an opium-inspired vision of Coleridge that he experienced, then tried to write down, but was interrupted half way through, and forgot the rest. The poem is all...

There is no direct reference to the underworld in "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. However, the poem does reference "caverns measureless to man" (4), and this image is central to the poem....

I find your question highly insightful, because on the one hand this poem seems to represent a highly vivid yet incomprehensible dream which really defies explanation. Thus one view to take when...

In "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the relationship of dreams and creation in Kubla Khan’s construction of his pleasure dome is founded in Coleridge's theory of the imagination. His...

Coleridge's poem expresses a very dreamy, imaginative vision that is characteristic of the Romantic emphasis on individualism and the importance of one person's unique perceptions. Coleridge...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's uses of diction and imagery transforms his poem "Kubla Khan" into an allegory for imagination. The first stanza introduces the setting of the poem and concept of the...

The "Preface" to Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan`has constructed the work as a pure example of Romantic poetry, as a `spontaneous overflowing of emotion.` Although scholarly discovery of manuscripts...

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The first stanza offers us serene images of Xanadu with its "pleasure dome," "gardens bright" and "many an incense-bearing tree," but in stanza two the tone changes as we meet the violence of the...

Note how in the last stanza we are presented with a figure that appears to be all-powerful and given strange abilities. The people feel the need to protect themselves from the poet using a ritual,...

If there's a poem that can be said to be inspired, it's Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." He claimed that it was composed one night after an opium-induced dream. He also claimed, somewhat less fancifully,...

The full title of the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is "Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment," named for the nature of its creation. As the story goes, Coleridge was taking an...

Lines 25-30 describe the power of the waters of the river that flows through Xanadu. While the opening lines of the poem celebrate Xanadu as a human creation, this passage celebrate the creations...

This is certainly a rather confusing poem in lots of ways, as it defies any kind of meaning that we would try to impose on it because of its fantastical nature, so I am not surprised you are...

This poem was not inspired by a muse in the classical sense of the term. In a note explaining the poem, Coleridge wrote that the idea for "Kubla Khan" came to him in a drug-induced...

Perhaps the most dramatic and meaningful extended gloss in the 1834 version (first printed in the 1817 version in Sybelline Leaves) of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates to lines...

Many critics view this poem as an allegory about the process of creating art: just as Kubla Khan creates his pleasure dome and his earthy paradise by imposing his will on nature, reflecting...

The first, italicized words after the title of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” call attention to the fragmentary status of that work: “Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.”This...

This dream vision is about the imaginative and creative process of the poetic genius. The poet-narrator dreams he is the Chinese kingdom of the emperor Kubla Khan, and this dream unleashes a...

"Kubla Khan" falls into three parts. The first thirty lines display a unity that dashes forward as if pouring out of the poet's pen unbidden—just as Coleridge describes his dream as having...

"Kubla Khan" is an unfinished narrative poem by Samuel Coleridge. Its said that the poem came to him in a vision, but that he was unable to finish it before the vision vanished. Its based...