ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -A poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), published 1816. Coleridge composed ‘Kubla Khan; Or, A Vision in a Dream’ in 1797 under the influence of opium. He fell into a reverie while reading a travel account, but his dream of the exotic Orient was interrupted by ‘a person on business from Porlock’.

Detailed explanation-2: -Most modern critics now view Kubla Khan as one of Coleridge’s three great poems, along with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel. The poem is considered one of the most famous examples of Romanticism in English poetry, and is one of the most frequently anthologized poems in the English language.

Detailed explanation-3: -The poem describes Kubla Khan as a powerful ruler who has great command. His authoritativeness lies in the fact that he can order for a pleasure dome to be built on merely one order. This pleasure dome is no less than a miracle as it comprises of caves of ice. What’s miraculous is that it is present in a sunny area.

Detailed explanation-4: -Thesis: In his poem Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses literary devices such as alliteration, juxtaposition, and symbolism to convey his attitude that . Rhyme schemes that appear in the poem include ABAAB, ABAB, ABBA, ABBBA, as well as rhymed couplets, all of which interlace without reason or pattern.

Detailed explanation-5: -’Kubla Khan’ was composed in 1797 during an excursion to nearby Linton and the Valley of the Stones. Although Coleridge recited the poem in company on several occasions it was not published until nearly 20 years later, in Poems (1816), in which he referred to it as ‘a psychological curiosity’.