Romanticism In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a chief example of Romanticism. It incorporates several characteristics such as the dual side of nature, mankind’s venture into it, and the emphasis on feelings and emotions. The poem’s themes include man’s relationship with nature and the uncertainty of creativity becoming realized. Coleridge reinforces this through the use of setting, imagery, metaphor tone, and the speaker.
First of all, the context of the poem is important to understanding the poem’s significance. According to the preface of this poem, the inspiration came from a dream that Coleridge had following taking opium. Coleridge combined both narcotic visions with his writing capability to create a piece that was unlike his other works. As a result, “Kubla Khan” is not set in the real world, but rather in the dream territory of Coleridge’s mind. In addition, the poem is only a fragment of the whole dream, as he forgot the rest of the dream after attending to business.
Coleridge uses setting as the premise of the poem. In the poem, Coleridge illustrates two settings. In the first stanza, Khan details a pleasant portion of Xanadu; he observes “gardens bright with sinuous rills” (Line 8), and forests as “ancient as the hills”

In the first stanza, the speaker is in the third person. Coleridge wrote, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan” (Line 1). Coleridge is describing the setting without involving Khan’s perspective. By doing this, the readers receive an objective view of Xanadu. In the second stanza, the speaker starts to become Khan as Coleridge includes an interjection, “But oh!” (Line 12), as well as the “ancestral voices” (Line 30) Khan hears. Readers can sense how the speaker may have altered this setting. In the third stanza, the speaker fully becomes Khan as lines incorporate personal pronouns. The timing amplifies Khan’s emotions as readers are allowed to appreciate nature