Examples Of Imagination In Kubla Khan

Romanticism is an intellectual, spiritual, and literary movement that begins at the start of the nineteenth century and concludes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of the many characteristics that are associated with Romanticism, the characteristics that are most evident in literature from this period are the characteristics of individuality and imagination. The author Edgar Allen Poe exhibits these characteristics in his works “The Black Cat”, and the “The Raven”.

Another technique of emphasis used throughout the poem is the use of imagery. Coleridge personifies the nature around him by comparing it to abstract nouns - the white flowerd Jasmin represents Innocence, the broad-leavd

One of the things that is so fascinating about poetry is that it allows readers to discover and sometimes challenge and channel their emotions as well as their understanding. A poem’s words as well as its structure can reveal many things to its intended audience. In “Myth” by Natasha Trethewey, the poems form is just as important as the words she writes, becoming a map for the journey Trethewey takes, using transitions to take us from one place to another. The nature of the poem therefor becomes multifaceted, as it encourages the reader to think about the speaker’s words and use of form and structure she uses to craft this epic story. Using form as a tool, Trethewey is able to use structure as a way to guide us as readers and the speaker across the conscious and unconscious thoughts and dreams the speaker faces in this story.

As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.

At the end of chapter 20 in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes his own experience with poetry and its effect on others’ imagination from an outsiders point of view:

To the Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.

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

By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that

Such a situation warrants Coleridge the title of visionary, and therefore his poem becomes a vision: a Romantically textual utopia whose realisation was challenged by the rational status quo of its historical origin. Due to this, Coleridge’s work will always seek practical affirmation and will therefore constantly be the source of metaphysically-oriented debate, leaving the dualism that rules it to be decided by the reader and the ideologies he or she brings to the text. This conclusion is supported by the words of John Beer:

The speaker furthermore conveys the idea that nature is a grandeur that should be recognized by including the element of imagery. The poet utilizes imagery as a technique to appeal to reader’s sense of sight . It is “the darkest evening of the year” (line 8) and a traveller and his horse stop “between the woods and frozen lake” (line 7). By writing with details such as these, readers are capable of effortlessly envisioning the peaceful scenery that lies before the speaker. The persona then draws on reader’s sense of sound. “The only other sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake.” The illustration allows readers to not only see,

In order to fully understand how supernatural themes played such a large role in Romanticism, we must further explore what Romanticism really is. This spiritual and artistic movement rejected rationalism, and emerged as a reaction against ‘the age of enlightenment’, which put strong emphasis on reason and logic. Thus, for the Romantics, literary creation was what the artist produced after reconstructing or developing a new interpretation of the world around him. It was the offspring of imagination applied to the writer’s impressions of real life. Authors such as Coleridge, Blake, and Shelley, believed that literary creation was the product of transforming reality into something beyond reason, but not beyond the

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.

Poets use many ways when they want to communicate something using poems. Poems are used as a means of passing ideas, information and expression of feelings. This has made the poets to use the natural things and images that people can relate with so that they can make these poems understandable. The most common forms of writing that are used by the poets are the figurative language for example imagery and metaphors. In addition, the poets use the natural landscape in their attempt to explore the philosophical questions. Therefore, this essay will explore the forms that have been used by the poets in writing poems using the natural landscape. The essay will be based on poems such as ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by

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.