Kubla Khan

Grade Levels

Excerpt

This activity gives students an opportunity to practice identifying and analyzing allusions. Allusions broaden the scope of a text and imbue passages with deeper meaning by subtly drawing on unexplained references to literature, history, science, geography, philosophy, mythology, or other aspects of a culture. Allusions are thus a powerful tool often employed by writers and are well worth understanding. In completing this activity, students will be able to identify, analyze, and interpret allusions, thereby accessing deeper meanings within the text.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) wrote “Kubla Khan” in 1797, supposedly after waking from an opium-induced sleep in which the poem arrived to him as if it were a dream. The process of actually writing the poem down proved to be vexing, resulting in a poem whose true subject is the challenges and imperfections of the artistic process. The poem itself is highly allusive, drawing on Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol emperor Kubla Khan, for its bright, exotic images.

Skills: analysis, close reading, drawing inferences from text, interpreting implications of allusions

Learning Objectives:
In completing this activity, students will

• identify different types of allusions and locate examples of allusion within a text;
• analyze examples of allusions to determine their purpose in the context of a passage of text;
• analyze examples of allusions to interpret their meaning and determine how they inform a passage of text.

About

Our eNotes Classroom Activities give students opportunities to practice developing a variety of skills. Whether analyzing literary devices or interpreting connotative language, students will work directly with the text. The main components of our classroom activities include the following:

• A handout defining the literary elements under discussion, complete with examples
• A step-by-step guide to activity procedure
• An answer key or selected examples for reference, depending on the activity

In completing these classroom activities, students will be able to classify and analyze different literary elements, thereby developing close-reading skills and drawing deeper inferences from the text.