Kubla Khan summary and analysis

Kubla Khan





The Poem
“Kubla Khan,” one of the most famous and most analyzed English poems, is a fifty-four-line lyric in three
verse paragraphs. In the opening paragraph, the title character decrees that a “stately pleasure-dome” be built
in Xanadu. Although numerous commentators have striven to find sources for the place names used here by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, there is no critical consensus about the origins or meanings of these names. The
real-life Kubla Khan, a thirteenth century Mongolian general and statesman who conquered and unified
China, lived in an elaborate residence known as K’ai-p’ing, or Shang-tu, in southeastern Mongolia.
Coleridge’s Kubla has his palace constructed where Alph, “the sacred river,” begins its journey to the sea.
The construction of the palace on “twice five miles of fertile ground” is described. It is surrounded by walls
and towers within which are ancient forests and ornate gardens “bright with sinuous rills.”
Xanadu is described more romantically in the second stanza. It becomes “A savage place! as holy and
enchanted/ As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted/ By woman wailing for her demon-lover!” It is
inhabited not by Kubla’s family and followers, but by images from Coleridge’s imagination. His Xanadu is a
magical place where the unusual is to be expected, as when a “mighty fountain” bursts from the earth,
sending “dancing rocks” into the air, followed by the sacred river itself. The poem has thus progressed from
the creations of Kubla Khan to the even more magical actions of nature. The river meanders for five miles
until it reaches “caverns measureless to man” and sinks “in tumult to a lifeless ocean.”
This intricate description is interrupted briefly when Kubla hears “from far/ Ancestral voices prophesying
war!” This may be an allusion to the opposition of the real Khan by his younger brother, Arigböge, which led
eventually to a military victory for Kubla. Coleridge then shifts the focus back to the pleasure-dome, with its
shadow floating on the waves of the river: “It was a miracle of rare device,/ A sunny pleasure-dome with
caves of ice!”
The final paragraph presents a first-person narrator who recounts a vision he once had of an Abyssinian maid
playing a dulcimer and singing of Mount Abora. The narrator says that if he could revive her music within
himself, he would build a pleasure-dome, and all who would see it would be frightened of “his flashing eyes,
his floating hair!” His observers would close their eyes “with holy dread,/ For he on honey-dew hath fed,/
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”
Coleridge prefaces the poem with an explanation of how what he calls a “psychological curiosity” came to be
published. According to Coleridge, he was living in ill health during the summer of 1797 in a “lonely
farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire.” Having taken
an “anodyne,” he fell asleep immediately upon reading in a seventeenth century travel book by Samuel
Purchas: “Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten
miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.” He claims that while sleeping for three hours he composed
two-hundred to three-hundred lines, “if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up
before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or
consciousness of effort.”


When Coleridge awoke, he remembered the entire poem and set about copying it down, only to be interrupted
for an hour “by a person on business from Porlock.” Returning to the poem, Coleridge could recall only
“some eight or ten scattered lines and images.” He claims he has since intended to finish “Kubla Khan” but
has not yet been able to.
Forms and Devices
The most striking of the many poetic devices in “Kubla Khan” are its sounds and images. One of the most
musical of poems, it is full of assonance and alliteration, as can be seen in the opening five lines:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
This repetition of a, e, and u sounds continues throughout the poem with the a sounds dominating, creating a
vivid yet mournful song appropriate for one intended to inspire its listeners to cry “Beware! Beware!” in their
awe of the poet. The halting assonance in the line “As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing” creates
the effect of breathing.
The alliteration is especially prevalent in the opening lines, as each line closes with it: “Kubla Khan,”
“pleasure-dome decree,” “river, ran,” “measureless to man,” and “sunless sea.” The effect is almost to
hypnotize the reader or listener into being receptive to the marvelous visions about to appear. Other notable
uses of alliteration include the juxtaposition of “waning” and “woman wailing” to create a wailing sound.
“Five miles meandering with a mazy motion” sounds like the movement it describes. The repetition of the
initial h and d sounds in the closing lines creates an image of the narrator as haunted and doomed:
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
The assonance and alliteration soften the impact of the terminal rhyme and establish a sensation of movement
to reinforce the image of the flowing river with the shadow of the pleasure dome floating upon it.
The imagery of “Kubla Khan” is evocative without being so specific that it negates the magical, dreamlike
effect for which Coleridge is striving. The “gardens bright with sinuous rills,” “incense-bearing tree,”
“forests ancient as the hills,” and “sunny spots of greenery” are deliberately vague, as if recalled from a
dream. Such images stimulate a vision of Xanadu bound only by the reader’s imagination.





Themes and Meanings
Much of the commentary on “Kubla Khan” has focused on the influence of Coleridge’s addiction to opium,
on its dreamlike qualities, the “anodyne” he refers to in his preface, but no conclusive connection between
the two can be proved. Considerable criticism has also dealt with whether the poem is truly, as Coleridge
claimed, a fragment of a spontaneous creation. The poet’s account of the unusual origin of his poem is
probably only one of numerous instances in which one of the Romantic poets proclaimed the spontaneity or
naturalness of their art. Most critics of “Kubla Khan” believe that its language and meter are too intricate for
it to have been created by the fevered mind of a sleeping poet. Others say that its ending is too fitting for the
poem to be a fragment.
Other contentions about “Kubla Khan” revolve around its meanings (or lack thereof). Some critics, including
T. S. Eliot in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), have claimed the poem has no veritable
meaning. Such analysts say its method and meaning are inseparable: The poem’s form is its only meaning.
For other commentators, “Kubla Khan” is clearly an allegory about the creation of art. As the artist decided
to create his work of art, so does Kubla Khan decide to have his pleasure-dome constructed. The poem’s
structure refutes Coleridge’s claim about its origins, since the first thirty-six lines describe what Kubla has
ordered built, and the last eighteen lines deal with the narrator’s desire to approximate the creation of the
pleasure-dome.
Xanadu is an example of humanity imposing its will upon nature to create a vision of paradise, since the
palace is surrounded by an elaborate park. That the forests are “ancient as the hills” makes the imposing of
order upon them more of a challenge. Like a work of art, Xanadu results from an act of inspiration and is a
“holy and enchanted” place. Within this man-decreed creation are natural creations such as the river that
bursts from the earth. The origin of Alph is depicted almost in sexual terms, with the earth breathing “in fast
thick pants” before ejaculating the river, a “mighty fountain,” in an explosion of rocks. The sexual imagery
helps reinforce the creation theme of “Kubla Khan.”
Like Kubla’s pleasure-dome, a work of art is a “miracle of rare device,” and the last paragraph of the poem
depicts the narrator’s desire to emulate Kubla’s act through music. As with Kubla, the narrator wants to
impose order on a tumultuous world. Like Xanadu, art offers a refuge from the chaos. The narrator, as with a
poet, is inspired by a muse, the Abyssinian maid, and wants to re-create her song. The resulting music would
be the equivalent “in air” of the pleasure-dome. As an artist, the narrator would then stand

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Periods of English Literature مراحل الادب الانجليزي 2

Jacobean Age (1603 - 1625)

العصر اليعقوبي

This was certainly the age of prose writing and Donne and Bacon were christened as propellers of doctrines proposed by them. Shakespeare with his tragedies and tragicomedies made an impact with the other notable playwrights such as Chapman, Burton, Beaumont and Fletcher.

Caroline Age (1625 - 1649)

This was the time when John Milton along with melancholy centric writers Burton and Browne composed prose and plays. It was also an era where the religious poet George Herbert concentrated on poetry on gallantry, courtship and courtly love.

Commonwealth Period (1649 - 1660)

Puritan Interregnum was an alternative term used for this era. The commonwealth age saw writers like Cowley, Marvell and Davenant. It was an age where Milton portrayed his prowess in political subjects and Hobbes' distinguished his writing style in the form of political treatise called Leviathan.

Neoclassical Period (1660 - 1785)

The neoclassical period was an institution of poets where the light of knowledge acquisition with discipline and respect was given an overwhelming importance. With neoclassic poetry, the subjects had the elements nature as its background. The restoration period marked an influx of theater where William Wycherley and George Etherege developed a genre of Comedy of manners. The Country Wife, William Wycherley's play centered around the nuances of bawdy language and semi-aristocratic flavor that delivered the eccentricities of characters with their names suggesting their counter characters, thus the play is allegorical with a completeness of its own. The Augustus age novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe and Lady Mary Wortley wrote poems of wit, candor and conviction.

Romantic Period (1785 - 1832)

The romantic period had its origins in spontaneity and quick wit. It was an age that lay stress on nature and deemed nature not as the background but the backbone of poetry. The romantic period had experimentation and invention running through the veins of poetry. Poets like Keats, Shelley, Burns, William Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth made a significant and radical impact on the face of poetry. It was an era where universe and nature were considered in the forefront of all the human nitty-gritty as the background of poetry.

Victorian Period (1832 - 1901)

The Victorian period had melancholy and mourning as its corner stones where poetry is concerned. Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were notable poets who focused on subjects of death and unconditional love and longing. This period also dealt with imaginative, often didactic verses composed that reflected on the socio-economic context in detail. Samuel Butler, Thomas Hardy, William Thackeray and Gerard Manley Hopkins were the notable authors and essayists who made their mark in this period of English literature.

Edwardian Period (1901 - 1914)

The span where the Victorian period ended and the World War I began marked the reign of King Edward. This was the period where Thomas Hardy gave up on writing novels for the love of poetry, William Butler Yeats and Rudyard Kipling made a name of their own in the field of poetry. Another coveted and well established playwright was Henry James who published his novels in the Edwardian era. These were The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl.

Georgian Period (1914 - 1936)

The Georgian period saw a group of writers denoted as Georgian poets who focused on rural subjects that were delicate to handle. They were subjects that were not regarded as bold and too ferocious in nature. The major characteristic was the poetry being submissive and more traditional in manner rather than rough, experimental and technical in pace and matter. Walter de la Mare and W.H. Davies were some of the poets that were regarded as Georgian poets.

Modernism and Postmodernism (1939 - ...)

Modernism and postmodernism are terms that have undergone relative change in the recent past. The modern poets include Yeats, Auden, T.S. Eliot, Franz Kafka amongst the many notable poets and authors. Modern period of English literature was marked by a new style, format, mis-en-scene, concept and the relative features of the subjects in question. Virginia Wolf's, a stream of thought writer, Jacob's Room and James Joyce's Ulysses were monotone narratives that signified the rapidity with which innovation in poetry occurred.

Postmodernism is an era in which the individual has to look beyond the obvious, draw parallels with reality with absurdity and overt projection of sexuality has been made prominent. Postmodernism marks R.K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy as writers who have their very own signature, post colonial ways of writing and projecting their thought in their unique ways.

English Literature is a treasure trove, that must be unearthed, for literature enthusiasts are perpetually mulling over the legacy, such stalwarts of the language have managed to define. Their genius, indeed, is indefinable - almost an embarrassment of the riches! 

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