Analysis of world literature topics

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge relies on rich multisensory imagery to achieve poetic goals in “Kubla Khan.” The sensory imagery Coleridge uses anchors the poem within the genre of Romanticism, as the poet evokes an idealized past based on the descriptions of the mythic Xanadu. Phrases like “stately pleasure-dome” (Stanza 1, line 2) also add evocative sexual imagery that coincides well with the imagery of the splendor of the natural world, with lines like “deep romantic chasm,” (Stanza 2, line 1). In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge uses multisensory imagery to juxtapose light and darkness, femininity and masculinity, civilization and savagery, to induce a dreamlike effect.

In keeping with the Romantic era tropes, Coleridge relies heavily on nature imagery. Each stanza is filled with references to nature, such as the “incense-bearing tree,” and the “sunless sea,” in Stanza 1. Stanza 2 continues to evolve the imagery of the natural world, only now Coleridge takes the reader on a journey to what seems to be more like an underworld. The dark chasm beneath the earth is evocative also for its female imagery, as well as its connection to ancient Greco-Roman myth. For instance, the underwater river Coleridge describes is reminiscent of Hades.

The entire poem evolves as a dreamscape, also a common element in Romantic literature. The poet even admits to the entire “vision,” romanticizing the “damsel with a dulcimer” in the third and final stanza. Juxtaposing fire and ice, Coleridge refers to the “milk of Paradise,” again using imagery that is filled with binaries and duality as well as sexuality.

2. The poetic imagination is what makes Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” timeless and evocative. The poet takes a historical figure, the Kubla Khan, and transforms him into a mythical creature who created a timeless fantasy world available for poets to contemplate. Using the poetic imagination, Coleridge fuses reality and fantasy.

In addition to using the real-life figure of the warrior Kubla Khan, Coleridge also blends imagery of the natural world with the unreal universe he describes as part of Xanadu. For instance, the poet uses descriptors of the caverns, trees, and sunlight to describe an “enchanted” place beneath the earth (Stanza 2, line 3). By blending imagery of the real and unreal, Coleridge takes the reader along on the journey to Xanadu. The reader perceives the “pleasure dome” as if it were a real place, because Coleridge has so effectively employed the poetic imagination to describe it. The rhythm, meter, and rhyming in “Kubla Khan” also corresponds with the imagery the poem contans.

Coleridge also uses the poetic imagination to uplift and inspire the reader. The mundane world offers few of the pleasures that one experiences in Xanadu, and yet Coleridge wants the reader to pay closer attention to how the real world does offer sublimity. For example, the musicality of the third stanza reminds the reader to appreciate the sonic delights on the real world. Long after the poem’s verses linger in the reader’s consciousness, the poetic imagination persists.

3. Although the literature and visual art of Romanticism, along with European classical music, receive the bulk of attention in the analysis of the era’s aesthetic, the revival of interest in folk music is also integral to Romantic ideals. Romanticism was about a return to the past, and a veneration of all things simple and natural. Largely a reaction against modernism, technological progress, capitalism, and urbanization, Romanticism eventually did fuel interest in returning to a simpler, peaceful past—or at least an imagined one. Therefore, returning to folk music made sense from within the Romantic worldview.

Appreciation of all types of folk music flourished during the Romantic era, which is why classical composers often weaved into their compositions folk music elements. In addition to the European folk music revivalism, the Americans also paid closer attention to the music that was the root of its burgeoning culture. Although excluded systematically from the production of cultural capital, African Americans symbolized the type of return to the basics theme that went hand-in-hand with Romanticism. Thus, American whites would ironically, and perhaps disturbingly, look towards the music of displaced and disparaged people as a sign of their own dismay with the trajectory of modern European civilization. In addition to revivals of black spirituals and African American folk music, Romanticism also imagined the “pristine Indian cultures,” the “noble savages” the Europeans romanticized as being somehow more spiritually connected with the world, and closer to the gods of nature than the technologically minded and increasingly secular dominant culture (Dame 71).

4. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence opens with an introduction that sets the tone for the rest of the composition. The introduction serves several functions: a means by which to establish meter and rhythm, as well as a method of laying the foundation for some of the Romantic imagery Blake employs in the poems to follow. Blake also uses the introduction to Songs of Innocence to establish and elucidate the theme of innocence: symbolized by baby animals and children.

In fact, Blake also uses the introduction of Songs of Innocence to explain the poet’s own creative process. In a remarkably self-reflective manner, Blake provides a sort of meta-text, perhaps signaling the birth of the postmodern reflexive nature of literature. Blake writes the introduction in first person, speaking of his “piping down” the valleys, repeating the word “piping” to show its dual nature of being both about physical ambulation and also about song (Stanza 1, lines 1-2). Then, the speaker is suddenly atop a cloud, where he sees a child, an angelic being. Thus Blake establishes the creative process as one that is driven by the heavens. Creativity is a spiritual process.

Repeating the term “pipe” again, the poet leads the reader like the pied piper into the body of the text. The child is what drives the creative process, too. Thus, the message is that creativity is a spiritual endeavor, one that requires the individual to surrender to the invisible, unseen worlds and become as innocent and receptive as a child.

5. Blake’s Songs of Experience is the counterpart to the Songs of Innocence, the yang to the other’s yin. Creating a binary structure serves several functions in Blake’s text, introducing the reader to the concept of duality as the underpinning of universal order. Two of the most notable counterpart poems shared between the Songs of Innocence and Experience are the ones that juxtapose the lamb and the lion: “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” respectively. While it may be overly simplistic to assume that Blake meant for the tiger to represent pure evil in comparison to the lamb’s pure innocence, the poet does want to question the efficacy of Christian dualism, and the idea that God created both good and evil.

The tiger is not as purely evil as the lamb is sweet, either. After all, Blake’s tiger is “burning bright,” a symbol of immortality and intelligence (Stanza 1, line 1). Using imagery of light, the poet shows that perceived evil is often just intelligence: the ability to discern the true nature of things instead of being awash in naiveté like the poor lamb. Viewed in this way, the innocence of the lamb comes dangerously close to being more akin to ignorance. The tiger, on the other hand, has insight and the experience of its breed, even though he also has the capacity to kill. The poems also proceed in a series of rhetorical questions, but the lamb is unable to answer them; the speaker must intervene and responds, “Little lamb, I’ll tell thee,” that the lamb of God claims to have constructed both innocence and experience, good and evil, light and darkness (Stanza 2, line 1). The tiger neither responds to the rhetorical questions but nor does the speaker deign to intervene in the natural order.

Works Cited

Blake, William. Songs of Innocence. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1934/1934-h/1934-h.htm

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43991/kubla-khan

Dame, Frederick William. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Spirit of Romanticism in American Colonial (Folk) Music: Immanence and Influence.” Lied und populäre Kultur / Song and Popular Culture 46. Jahrg. (2001), pp. 71-116