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Critical analysis on kubla khan by S.T Coleridge
Critical appreciation on s.t. coleridges kubla Khan
Critical appreciation on s.t. coleridges kubla Khan
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An Analysis of Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn"
Although the form of "Kubla Kahn" is beautiful, it is complex. The rhyming patterns are quite complicated; the first stanza, for instance, rhymes in the pattern abaab ccdede. Coleridge's patterns of alliteration are also involved: He will sometimes use the sound at the beginning of one syllable as the sound at the beginning of the next syllable, as in "Xanadu did" in line one, "miles meandering" in line 25, and "deep delight" in line 44. He also alliterates vowels, not only consonants, to produce a rhythmic singsong effect.
Although the form and the beautiful language in "Kubla Kahn" were all that I could appreciate when I first read the poem, I have since come to realize that the poem has a complex symbolic pattern, as well. My own analysis may seem to be paltry when faced with the fact that there have been thousands of criticisms of this poem published, some comprising entire volumes. But the very quantity of criticism may serve as an argument that any interpretation of the poem is really an investigation of the writer of the criticism. That is to say, the poem has no outward meaning, or at least that the meaning put in by the author is of secondary importance. The subtitle of "Kubla Kahn" reads "Or a Vision in a Dream." Dreams may or may not have symbolic meaning, but it is doubtful that anyone intentionally designed symbolic meaning specifically for an individual dream.
My reading of "Kubla Kahn" depends on a biographical detail from Coleridge's life. Coleridge was an opium addict for years, and Appelbaum, an editor of a collection of romantic poetry, claims that "some of his [Coleridge's] poems reflect the anguish this caused." (Appelbaum viii) Coleridge...
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...s a change in the author's attitude. Whereas he may have previously been supposed to be merely an opium visionary -- a weak person who lives outside the everyday reality that the rest of us inhabit -- he is revealed here to be a creator, a strong individual, as well. Coleridge is here identifying himself with Kubla Kahn. The Kahn decreed a stately pleasure dome, while Coleridge created a poem that is equated with the dome. "Kubla Kahn" is Coleridge's attempt to rise above what many people assume drug addicts to be and to show himself to be a strong creator, on a level with an emperor who founded of a great dynasty.
Works Cited:
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. "Kubla Kahn" in The McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry. Ed. Kraft Rompf and Robert DiYanni. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993.
Appelbaum, Stanley, Ed. English Romantic Poetry: An Anthology. Mineola: Dover, 1996.
The alliteration used is to emphasize rhythm in the poem. On the other hand, the poet also depicts a certain rhyme scheme across each stanza. For example, the first stanza has a rhyme scheme of this manner a, b, c, d, e, a. With this, the rhyme scheme depicted is an irregular manner. Hence, the poem does not have a regular rhythm. Moreover, the poet uses a specific deign of consonance, which is present in the poem (Ahmed & Ayesha, p. 11). The poet also uses the assonance style depicted in the seventh stanza, “Seven whole days I have not seen my beloved.” The letter ‘o’ has been repeated to create rhythm and to show despair in the poem. On the second last line of the seventh stanza, the poet uses the style of consonance, “If I hug her, she’ll drive illness from me. By this, the letter ‘l’ is repeated across the line. The poet’s aim of using this style of Consonance is to establish rhythm in the poem and add aural
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In his preface to "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes the claim that his poem is a virtual recording of something given to him in a drug-induced reverie, "if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things . . . without any sensation or consciousness of effort." As spontaneous and as much a product of the unconscious or dreaming world as the poem might seem on first reading, however, it is also a finely structured, well wrought device that suggests the careful manipulation by the conscious mind.
couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs..." Their dream is to own a
To fully understand this poem, the reader would find it helpful to know what led Coleridge to write it. Coleridge grew up with English essayist Charles Lamb in school and the two were close friends (Merriman.) In their later years, however, the two rarely saw each other as Coleridge lived in the country side and Lamb lived in the city, where he cared for his mentally ill sister (Merriman.) On one of the rare days Lamb went to visit him, Coleridge planed to go on a walk through the scenic area surrounding his house with Lamb and some other friends, but before they left, Coleridge’s wife accidentally dropped boiling milk on his foot and he was unable to participate in the walk (Benzon.) While the others gallivanted across the countryside, Coleridge sat in his garden and wrote this poem.
Magnuson, Paul. "The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons & The Wordsworths in 1802." Criticism 4(2001):451. eLibrary. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Throughout the poem there are clearly defined rhyme changes, the poem goes backwards and forwards from aabb to abab.
In two works by Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, both works regard the imagination as vitally important. In the Ancient Mariner, the imagination (or rather, the lack of it) condemns the Mariner to a kind of hell, with the fiends of sterility, solitude, and loneliness: “’God save thee, Ancient Mariner, from the fiends that plague thee thus! Why look’st thou so?’ ‘With my crossbow I shot the Albatross’”. In Kubla Khan, the imagination of an external being, the narrator that Coleridge created, the ideal critic, can create a masterpiece that far outstrips the meager piece of work that even the emperor of a huge, rich civilization can produce: “I would build that dome in air, a sunny dome! Those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, and all should cry, Beware! Beware!” In Kubla Khan, the imagination can even make people fear an otherwise inconsequential event, sequence, or organism.
Although both “Kubla Khan,” by Samuel Coleridge and “Ode on Grecian Urn,” by John Keats are poems originating from the poets’ inspiration from historical figure, the two poems convey different messages through their respective metaphors. While Coleridge emphasizes on the process of creating a Romantic poem, Keats expresses his opinion about art by carefully examining the details of the Grecian urn.
It is believed that “Kubla Khan” was created by Coleridge when he was in a deep sleep that was induced by the use of opiates which were prescribed for dysentery. He fell asleep while reading Purcha’s Pilgrimage about building of Kubla Khan’s palace and garden. When he woke up from experiencing the dream in which he created the poem he began writing it down. He was part way through writing the poem and was interrupted by a person from the nearby town of Porlock. After this interruption he was unable to complete the poem because his access to the dream was lost. The unfinished work was not published for three decades. Much mystery has enshrouded “Kubla Khan” and it’s meaning due to the circumstances of it’s creation. The poem itself is as mystical and interesting as the story behind its creation.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 459-462. Print.
Through alliteration and imagery, Coleridge turns the words of the poem into a system of symbols that become unfixed to the reader. Coleridge uses alliteration throughout the poem, in which the reader “hovers” between imagination and reality. As the reader moves through the poem, they feel as if they are traveling along a river, “five miles meandering with a mazy motion” (25). The words become a symbol of a slow moving river and as the reader travels along the river, they are also traveling through each stanza. This creates a scene that the viewer can turn words into symbols while in reality they are just reading text. Coleridge is also able to illustrate a suspension of the mind through imagery; done so by producing images that are unfixed to the r...