SOURCE: Chayes, Irene H. “‘Kubla Khan’ and the Creative Process.” Studies in Romanticism 6, no. 1 (autumn 1966): 1-21.

In the following essay, Chayes interprets “Kubla Khan” as one of Coleridge's most significant early statements on the process of poetic creation.

In the evolution of “Kubla Khan” criticism over the past two generations,¹ the most noteworthy change has been the quiet downgrading of the famous prefatory note in prose which since 1816 has accompanied the standard published text and has enormously influenced the way the poem has been understood. Since the discovery of the Crewe MS. and a much simpler, factual version of the note,² the tendency has been to dismiss the later version and the elaborate story it tells as one more example of Coleridge's “self-justifying memory” in the face of accumulating unfinished projects.³ This may be as great a critical error, however, as the earlier, unquestioning acceptance of the 1816 note...