Preview

An Explication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Kahn

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2362 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
An Explication of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Kahn
Explication n°4 : “Kubla Khan »

Kubla Khan, one of the most famous poem of English literature, is written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797 and was published in Christabel, Kubla Khan, and the Pains of Sleep in 1816. Kubla Khan is one of the most important poem of Coleridge and, according to the preface of the book, he wrote it during the time that he passed in a farm house between Porlock and Linton in England. Because of the opium that he had taken - prescribed to him to cure dysentery, Coleridge felt asleep when he was reading a story about Kubla Khan, which led to his dream and his poem. Coleridge said that, while he was asleep, “images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions”. When he woke up, he kept the clear and accurate memories of what he had just seen in his dream and immediately started writing a poem from it. Unfortunately, he was interrupted by an inhabitant of the town, “A person from Porlock” who interfered with his process of writing. No one knows who he was or why he had disturbed Coleridge but the person from Porlock became an expression which is now used to refer to an unwanted person who interrupts the process of inspiration. Because of this visit, Coleridge forgot almost everything of the dream he had as the preface says “all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! Without the after restoration of the latter”.
At the first reading, we understand that the poem talks about the mongol emperor Kubilaï Khan, creator of the Yuan dynasty, and his summer palace in Shangdu - Coleridge calls it Xanadu. Then, we get the impression that the poem presents the theme of the powerless and fragility of writing. Through the dream, we notice the problem of imagination and the result on the paper, the problem of the gap between what he dreamed of and what he wrote. Coleridge, in this poem, exploits the theme of the fantastic, strange

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The poem flows through various images, each allowing the reader to become further immersed in its haunting melody. Readers experience the river’s “ceaseless turmoil seething” (17) and hear the “woman wailing for her demon-lover” (16) further adding to the wonder of the poem. Moreover, it appears living, breathing as it cascades forward only to find an abrupt stop. This standstill creates numerous questions concerning the intentions behind “Kubla Khan’s” fragmented nature and the purpose behind…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    On Frost at Midnight

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In the next stanza, he speaks passionately about his infant son. Coleridge hopes that he will grow up in the countryside amid the trees, unlike Coleridge, who felt like cattle (line 52), trapped between cloisters and the only nature he saw was when he looked up to the sky. The eternal language he mentions in line 60 is nature and Coleridge believes that nature will teach his son more than Coleridge himself was taught in school.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The great American frontier, long depicted as a harsh and ruthless place over and over again for hundreds of years. Thomas Cole depicts the very beginning stages of this legendary story of expansion in 1832 in his piece titled The Oxbow. Cole argues through this piece and through his Essay on American Scenery that indeed American scenery is just as great as that of Europe if not better due to its untouched Beauty.…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Before the actual narrative of the poem begins, the reader is presented with a Latin epigraph taken from Burnet’s "Archaeologiae Philosophicae" (1692). The main theme taken from this quotation is that one must maintain a balance between acknowledging the imperfect, temporal world, yet also striving to understand the ethereal and ideal world of spirits, ghouls and ghosts in order to reach an eventual understanding of the truth. Coleridge uses this quotation in order to remind the reader to pay attention to the near-constant interactions between the real world and the spiritual world in the poem, and like the Ancient Mariner, the reader must explore and navigate these interactions in order to understand the truth behind the poem.…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    “Five Myths about Immigration” is an essay written by David D. Cole which originally appeared in The Nation on October 17, 1994. The essay is a look at the ignorance and misinterpretation or “myths” as Cole calls them that immigrants are faced with every day in the U.S. His credibility on the subject speaks for itself. A Professor of Law at Georgetown University, after his graduation from Yale Law School, Professor Cole served as a law clerk to Judge Arlin M. Adams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Not long after beginning his clerkship, Cole became a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights. He litigated a number of major First Amendment cases. His most notable case, Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) established that the First Amendment does in fact protect flag burning. He is also the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine. He still volunteers as a staff attorney for the Center (2006, Georgetown University Faculty profile). The question at hand is if in fact this essay’s point of view still holds true in 2006. I have chosen two of the five myths to analyze their content and compare against data from 1994 to the present.…

    • 921 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem itself it a lot alike to a detective story as Armitage forces the reader to try and figure out what is going on. Armitage also forces the readers to make their own judgements on the man described and what has happened to him, to a certain extent.…

    • 501 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    1. Write about the ways Coleridge tells the story in Part 6 of the poem. (21 marks)…

    • 2267 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Thorough Analysis of the poem; The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot, by studying the Speaker/Narrator, The Setting, Characters and Themes.…

    • 5385 Words
    • 22 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    He exaggerates his confinement using Had dimmed my eyes to blindness! which relates to darkness and the world shutting him out. The first scene in Coleridges imaginative journey is the roaring dell. Visual senses enhance the description of the scene only speckled by the mid-day sun. The dell is a reflection of his current mood, unhealthy and isolated. Unsunnd and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves neer tremble still draws the reader further into his journey. The yellow leaves suggests the plant is struggling to survive and possibly dying from the lack of…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Analyzing these poems, you can easily come to a conclusion that authors are in a conflict with the outer world. But the nature and the roots of the conflict differ each author and each poem has its own story of the war against the universe and the story of the pain, caused to him or to her by this world. Thus, talking about each poem, in particular, we notice the more than specific and purely pessimistic way of the all the author's way of expression. Nevertheless, we, also, pay attention to the each author writing manner. These manners can be explained by three main factors. By revenge, by a crush of the world and by the main hero death.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Coleridge’s, This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, he really shows romanticism with his wonderful naturistic descriptions. For example in lines 23-26, Coleridge writes, “of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, with some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up the slip of smooth clear blue betwixt…

    • 255 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    descrptive writing

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages

    What is the aim of the poem? Does it, for example, describe an experience, describe a place, or protest about something? Try asking yourself why the poet wrote the poem.…

    • 458 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    During what is generally defined as the Romantic period, many poets, scientists and philosophers were greatly intrigued by dreams. Southey kept a dream journal, as did Sir Hymphry Davy, a close friend of Coleridge's; Thomas Beddoes wrote of dreams from a medical perspective in Hygeia and dreams were often a hot topic of conversation at the dinner parties of those who kept company with poets and the like (Ford 1998:5). There were many contradictory theories on the importance, interpretation and origin of dreams, at this time. Some believed that dreams were a form of divine inspiration, others that they were caused by spirits that temporarily possessed the body of the sleeper, while there were those who thought that dreams were a manifestation of the body's physical condition. De Quincey and Coleridge were two writers who both held an exceptional interest in dreams, each with their own ideas on the subject. In this essay I propose to examine De Quincey's and Coleridge's ideas on dream and daydream, and to show that opium was a profoundly influencing factor in their lives, works and dreams. I shall start by briefly outlining some of De Quincey's and then Coleridge's ideas on dreams; I shall then move on to ask what was the effect of opium on their creativity, dreams and imagination, before looking at how dream and daydream are distinguished in their ideas. Finally I wish to include a brief section on the anticipation of Freud, and to close with the question of how important opium was to the writing of my chosen authors. Since dreams and opium are so intertwined in both Coleridge and De Quincey I feel it is appropriate to consider the two subjects alongside each other.…

    • 3260 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The compelling poem “The Eolian Harp’ written by Samuel Coleridge is a poem of medium length, yet by no means a straight forward poem. Its message and ideals are elevated and hidden through Coleridge’s subtle capitalization of words, the pantheism riddled across the poem, and allusions of mythology and bible verses. However, this poem of wind, nature, music, and God is one of the most beautiful poems of the Romantic era because of its superior poetic usage of terms.…

    • 1210 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    English Poetry

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In this essay, I will be comparing four poems: Checking out me history; Singh Song; The Ruined Maid and Give. ‘Checking out me history’ By John Agard is a strong piece which shows a hint of anger and almost betrayal as he enlightens us on his knowledge of unknown history. The second poem, ‘Singh Song’ by Daljit Nagra has a stereotypical Indian man who runs one “ov his daddy’s shop” bit it has the theme of romance added. Thirdly, The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy, the poem is a conversation between two female friends, the poem depicts a young country girl who has become a rich man’s mistress or a prostitute to escape her own poverty and the friend seems to envy her. Lastly, ‘Give’ by Simon Armitage, the poem is about homelessness and the way society reacts to beggars, the poem is in the eyes and voice of a beggar. I will be exploring the ways these emotional voices are presented and used to challenge the stereotypes.…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays