‘Symbolism and imagination in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Kahn' and their relationship to the design of an oriental garden - The Prince Regent's Royal Pavilion’.
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Authors
Strongman, L.
Keywords
Coleridge
Orientalism
Imagination
Kubla Khan
Orientalism
Imagination
Kubla Khan
Description of form
Publisher
Rights
Rights holder
Issue Date
2013
Peer-reviewed status
Type
Article
Abstract
There is a lack of a direct reference to the poem ‘Kubla Kahn’ in Coleridge’s note books and journals in the late 1790s and the disclaimer in the 1816 Preface (the ‘Crewe manuscript’ version) refers to the poem as the product of the poet’s ‘psychological curiosity’ (1993, p. 203). It is already known that the self-conscious and historical fabrication, the imagistic attention to the construct of orientalism, point towards a multiplicity of influences on the poem’s creation including (but not limited to) Southey, Shelley, Marco Polo, Dante Purchas, Vishnu and Banks. This article contends that the iambic dreamwork of Coleridge’s ‘incantatory elevation’ were not only product of the interaction of Coleridge’s hypersensitive imagination with the Devonshire and Lake-district British landscapes of his youth. They were also a product of the socio-political cultural climate of British society in the 1790s and early 1800s, represented symbolically in the architecture of the Prince Regents Royal Pavilion.
Citation
Strongman, L. (2013). ‘Symbolism and imagination in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Kubla Kahn' and their relationship to the design of an oriental garden - The Prince Regent's Royal Pavilion’. Altitude: An e-journal of emerging humanities work, 11.