Careful Manipulation in Coleridge's Kubla Khan Essay

However, the last two lines of the second stanza have another meaning altogether. The lines, “Where thoughts serenely sweet express/ How pure, how dear, their dwelling-place” (lines 11-12), talk about the thoughts of the beautiful

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

The appreciation of nature is illustrated through imagery ‘and now the country bursts open on the sea-across a calico beach unfurling’. The use of personification in the phrase ‘and the water sways’ is symbolic for life and nature, giving that water has human qualities. In contrast, ‘silver basin’ is a representation of a material creation and blends in with natural world. The poem is dominated by light and pure images of ‘sunlight rotating’ which emphasizes the emotional concept of this journey. The use of first person ‘I see from where I’m bent one of those bright crockery days that belong to so much I remember’ shapes the diverse range of imagery and mood within the poem. The poet appears to be emotional about his past considering his thoughts are stimulated by different landscapes through physical journey.

Since it does, when reading each line, there is a resilient connection that allows the reader to put together and feel for what the narrator is speaking of. As each line is metrically linked, the words are further recited in a durable voice and the poem is virtually put together, musically. In the first and second lines of the third stanza, an apostrophe, a figure of speech that directly addresses an absent person or entity, is presented, “We smile, but O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise.”

You really feel a sense of hopelessness then in line eight of stanza two you see your first word that has some kind of hope to it which is the word lightness. Once you go to stanzas three and four you see a shift from once hopelessness to maybe there is hope in the mist of darkness. Also, another thing that the poet does is how in some lines there is an extra spacing between certain words, I think by him doing that he wants the reader to really focus on this words because if you notice the spaces are in between words that are simple and could be overlooked so by putting the extra spaces it will make the reader notice it more. For me the turn(volta) it’s happening in line eight line “As how its lightness after was a gift”, like a said before this line is the start of a different word tone compared to what was said before that line and also what is said after. This line does a good job at showing this next start of life like for example it says in line eleven “ I couldn’t while they watch me set it

The most chaotic element of the poem not actually found in the quite disordered first stanza, but right at the beginning of the second stanza lies the revelation of the reason for the overwhelming chaos. The speaker had a dream, a desire, to leave this chaotic world. The speaker experiences being told that “it didn’t matter.” The speaker must have perceived all the past images to be chaotic because of his depressing experience. However, even if this is the climax of chaos, it is in a way a turning point toward are more ordered and peaceful world.

In the third stanza, a lot of imagery is used. The significant ones are present in the seventh and eleventh lines. In the first line, the poet writes, "A

Finally in the third stanza there is the semantic field of nature: ‘mountain’, ‘rivers’, ‘seas’. Nature has the role of judge. It decides whether she has to be punished or not. Nature is represented as a sort of divine entity deciding of her fate because she has decided of someone else’s right to live. Again the water is represented several times with ‘rivers’ (line 17) and ‘seas’ (line 18 and 19) it gives the impression that she thinks

It is interesting how some of the narrator's Western-like education seeps through into the stanza; now, in contrast to the first stanza, there are terms such as the children jumping not through 'water', but from “element to element” (air to water) and imagery of diamond-drops shooting along “trajectories too long for me to measure”, as opposed to the first stanza's fairly basic lexical choice.

In the first couple of lines of the first stanza, “Most like an Arch – an entrance

Coleridge’s ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’, is a poem describing a man’s changing views as he contemplates the natural word which he has been prevented from seeing. Coleridge’s poem demonstrates the ability of individuals to modify their morals and values upon receiving a cathartic release from their relationship with nature, as predicated almost entirely on the imagination. Through allowing the persona to visualise the encounters his friends are making with nature along their journey, Coleridge first demonstrates the capabilities of the imagination in allowing us to picture things in certain detail, as shown through “now my friends emerge,” which in all exemplifies the presence of imagination in our relationship with nature. Furthermore, the description of their journey demonstrates the liberation received from engaging with nature, as shown where they “wander in gladness,” which relates to the cathartic release obtained from viewing nature that pushes us to reassess our ideas and perceptions. By showing his gradual change in tone, the influence of the persona’s imagination is shown, which when in conjunction with his exclamation of “yes!” reveals our emotional capabilities if becoming engulfed in our imaginations of nature. Also, by choosing to allow the persona to speak in a melodramatic tone, the poet is able to again explicitly demonstrate his

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

There are a myriad of critical theory lenses that can be applied and utilized to closely observe pieces of literature. One of these theories is John Keats’s Negative Capability theory which consists of an idea of “…when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason…” (Keats 968). Ultimately, this signifies that in poetry the emphasis be placed on the significance of inquisitiveness and the asking of questions of the life and scenery around one’s self, rather than placing emphasis on strongly searching for these answers. This theory can be applied to a multitude of works, but for these sakes and purposes what will be critiqued is Samuel Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. In a subtle

Imagery has been one of the most pivotal movements in the cultural and intellectual history of English Literature. The comparison is not only among the works of their own rather it also includes the differences and traces of similarity with the works of others writers of different ages. The analysis is done by reading the actual text and interpreting the meaning by understanding the deep phrases hidden in the poetry. Different critics showed different aspects by their research. Some found out merits and some found out demerits in the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The merits includes uniqueness, healing power of poetry, and interpretation of their imagination for things whereas the demerits include slack of humour, lack of range and lyricism in their poetry. On a whole Wordsworth and Coleridge works have gained lot of interest and tempted many critics to write on their methods and strategies which they adopted in their work.

Samuel Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan is a metaphorical journey through a complex labyrinth of symbols and images that represent the unconscious and seemingly troubled mind. It is a voyage that continually spirals downward toward uncharted depths, while illustrating the unpredictable battle between the conscious and the unconscious that exists inside every individual. Moreover, the poem appears to follow a dreamlike sequence past numerous, vivid images that are mainly artificial recreations of the narrator’s (most likely Coleridge’s) previous thoughts and experiences.