SOURCE: “‘Kubla Khan’ and Eighteenth Century Aesthetic Theories,” Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter, 1991, pp. 15-24.

In the following essay, Wheeler identifies “Kubla Khan” as a poem that reflected the concerns and interests of its age. The critic contends that by the time Coleridge wrote his poem, many of the ideas, imagery, symbols, and references to Orientalism had, in fact, already been assimilated into the English literary tradition.

Few poems of classic status in the English literary corpus seem more exotic to the modern reader than “Kubla Khan.” Coleridge's tantalising account of its origins combines with the Oriental imagery to tend to disassociate the poem from its literary tradition. The perhaps surprising conclusion persists however that if ever a poem reflected the concerns and interests of its age, “Kubla Khan” is that poem. Yet the works on sources has acted both to obscure and to reveal the exemplary nature...