SOURCE: “Pandemonium in Xanadu,” Romanticism Past and Present, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1981, pp. 23-40.

In the following essay, Tapscott proposes that Coleridge's vision of Xanadu in “Kubla Khan” closely parallels Milton's Eden before the Fall, both in its description of the physical detail and in its moral ambiguity.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man                                         Down to a sunless sea. 

Kubla Khan decrees his dome in an Edenic setting. Mythic, exotic, and remarkably tangible for a visionary landscape, the first representation of Xanadu locates the mystical drama and prepares for the full description of the dome.¹ In the first two lines of the poem, Coleridge specifies the place (Xanadu), the central actor (Kubla Khan), his action (the decree), and its effects (the dome). That is, the opening lines pre-scribe Xanadu and Kubla Khan's action in it. The...