An Analysis of Coleridges Kubla Kahn Essay -- Coleridge Kubla Khan Es

An Analysis of Coleridges Kubla Kahn Although the form of Kubla Kahn is beautiful, it is complex. The rhyming patterns are quite complicated the runner stanza, for instance, rhymes in the pattern abaab ccdede. Coleridges patterns of alliteration are also involved He will sometimes use the sound at the beginning of iodin 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 trance in line 44. He also alliterates vowels, not only consonants, to get 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 measly when faced with the fact that there have been thousands of criticisms of this poem published, some comprising faultless volumes. But the very quantity of criticism may serve as an argument th at any interpretation of the poem is really an investigation of the author of the criticism. That is to say, the poem has no outward moment, 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 knowing symbolic meaning specifically for an individual dream. My reading of Kubla Kahn depends on a biographical detail from Coleridges life. Coleridge was an opium addict for years, and Appelbaum, an editor of a collection of amatory poetry, claims that some of his Coleridges poems reflect the anguish this caused. (Appelbaum viii) Coleridge... ...s a change in the authors attitude. Whereas he may have previously been supposed to be merely an opium aery -- a weak person who lives outside the everyday reality that the backup of us inhabit -- he is revealed here to be a creator, a strong individual, as well. Colerid ge is here identifying himself with Kubla Kahn. The Kahn decreed a stately diversion dome, while Coleridge created a poem that is equated with the dome. Kubla Kahn is Coleridges attempt to rise above what umpteen 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 wide 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 amative Poetry An Anthology. Mineola Dover, 1996.