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‘Kubla Khan’

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A Coleridge Companion

Part of the book series: Literary Companions ((LICOM))

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Abstract

‘Kubla Khan’ is a fascinating and exasperating poem. Almost everyone has read it, almost everyone has been charmed by its magic, almost everyone thinks he knows what it is about — and almost everyone, it seems, has felt impelled to write about it. It must surely be true that no poem of comparable length in English or any other language has been the subject of so much critical commentary. Its fifty-four lines have spawned thousands of pages of discussion and analysis. ‘Kubla Khan’ is the sole or a major subject in five book-length studies;1 close to 150 articles and book-chapters (doubtless I have missed some others) have been devoted exclusively to it; and brief notes and incidental comments on it are without number. Despite this deluge, however, there is no critical unanimity and very little agreement on a number of important issues connected with the poem: its date of composition, its ‘meaning’, its sources in Coleridge’s reading and observation of nature, its structural integrity (i.e. fragment versus complete poem), and its relationship to the Preface by which Coleridge introduced it on its first publication in 1816.

If a man could pass thro’ Paradise in a Dream, & have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, & found that flower in his hand when he awoke — Aye! and what then? (CN, III no. 4287)

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Notes

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  7. In fairness, I hasten to add that, in the revised version of this paper which appears as chapter 8 in Mr Watson’s Coleridge the Poet (London, 1966), he begins by saying that ‘this chapter is bound to be speculative’ and by confessing that ‘some aspects of “Kubla Khan” remain inexplicable’ (p. 117).

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  1. Ottawa, Canada

    John Spencer Hill

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© 1983 John Spencer Hill

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Hill, J.S. (1983). ‘Kubla Khan’. In: A Coleridge Companion. Literary Companions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03798-8_3

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