Kubla Khan
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Though left uncompleted, “Kubla Khan” is one of the most famous examples of Romantic era poetry. In it, Samuel Coleridge provides a stunning and detailed example of the power of the poet’s imagination through his whimsical description of Xanadu, the capital city of Kublai Khan’s empire.
Samuel Coleridge penned “Kubla Khan” after waking up from an opium-induced dream in which he experienced and imagined the realities of the great Mongol ruler’s capital city. Coleridge began writing what he remembered of his dream immediately upon waking from it, and intended to write two to three hundred lines. However, Coleridge was interrupted soon after and, his memory of the dream dimming, was ultimately unable to complete the poem.
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Samuel Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet and philosopher who, with fellow poet William Wordsworth, founded the Romantic Movement in England. In addition to penning the celebrated poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, Coleridge was an influential scholar, whose work on William Shakespeare reintroduced the playwright’s work to contemporary writers. He is also credited with helping introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speakers. Coleridge’s poetical work would later influence Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American transcendentalist movement.
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