Samuel Taylor Coleridge’S “Kubla Khan” Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE’S “KUBLA KHAN”
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The relationship between the speaker and the reader in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem titled “Kubla Khan” is one of the most interesting poems in classical English poetry. This poem effuses an interesting relationship between the speaker and its reader given the addiction of its composer to opium and the fact that he composed it in a reported state of semi-consciousness. However, a critical analysis of the poem in terms of how the speaker relates with his readers exposes some aspects of euphoric vagueness and other attributes that this paper intends to investigate.
The speaker’s handling of the poem in the first part is such that he introduces his readers to the setting in a rather overdone manner. The poem is set in Xanadu where there reigns a powerful Asian conqueror named Kubla Khan. Investigating how the speaker relates to his readers, one finds that the former is keen to immerse his readers into the setting and its environment in a rather over-enthusiastic manner. Apparently, the speaker’s intentions were founded on a need for and retention of the readers’ attention given how detailed the references to the surroundings and its inhabitants are. Before the Abyssinian maid shows up in the poem, Coleridge makes sure that his readers are totally immersed in the setting using vivid explanations that border the extreme. However, one can also see how easy it becomes to distract the seemingly fixated speaker based on what happens once the maid comes into the scene. The focus of attention changes as Coleridge’ shifts readers to milk of paradise and flashing eyes. It becomes very clear that the relationship between Coleridge and his readers is rather platonic at the beginning because most readers will be left confused rather than interested in what transpires in the rest of the composition.[William Christie, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), xx.]
Further investigation of the speaker’s handling of the poem reveals an honest attempt midway through the poem at trying to make it easier for readers to understand the poem. Apparently, Coleridge seems to realize midway through the poem that many readers might have been lost and he adopts a more vivid mode. He treats readers to rather descriptive verses meant to instill a better understanding as if he realizes that the beginning of his poem might have set a bad precedence. One good example of this hand-holding exercise is how he explains the landscape by stating its dimensions as ‘twice five miles’ (6-11) and his description of the fortress, gardens, and greenery. Coleridge seems to understand his previous mistake during the start of the poem and slows down his pace to make it easier or readers to grasp not only Kubla Khan’s immense power, but the awe of his presence and those around him.[Cengage Learning Gale, A Study Guide for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." (Farmington Hills: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2016), xx.]
Further attempts at developing the relationship between the speaker and his readers are exist in Coleridge’s use of comparisons to create graphic imagery. This development in the relationship between the speaker and his readers serves to instill more confidence in the later while creating added interest in the former. Coleridge compares the falling rocks following a volcanic eruption to falling hail. The eruptions are actually likened to a sacred river whose flow gushes upwards. Such comparisons serve to instill additional comprehension in the reader’ minds as they follow Coleridge’s euphoric composition to its end.
In the final stanzas of Coleridge’s poem, he seems keen to connect with his readers in arriving at a logical analysis of the events that have unfolded in the poem. This serves to instill a sense of trust between the speaker and his readers in a composition that obviously began on the wrong footing. Coleridge uses repetition to explain his understanding of the sunny domes meaning brightness and caverns denoting darkness, the speaker offer his own evaluation of various seemingly supernatural phenomenon. Additionally, the speaker’s recollection of the Abyssinian maid and her dulcimer followed by a wish he could experience them again seems to instill some degree of reality to the otherwise euphoric dream-like compositions. These reflections reinforce the relationship between the speaker and his readers this solidifying the otherwise platonic connection with which the poem started.[Gregory Leadbetter, "“Kubla Khan”," Coleridge and the Daemonic Imagination, 2011, xx, doi:10.1057/9780230...