SOURCE: “Coleridge's ‘Kubla Khan’: A Metaphor for the Creative Process,” South Atlantic Review, Vol. 51, No. 4, November, 1986, pp. 17-29.

In the following essay, Milne explores the idea that “Kubla Khan” is a poem about the creative process, focusing on the landscape, the figure of Kubla Khan, and the vision of Xanadu presented in the work.

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Although debate continues over whether or not the headnote Coleridge published with “Kubla Khan” in 1816 should be regarded as a factual account of the poem's origin, recent studies have suggested that regardless of its basis in fact the headnote serves most importantly as what Warren Stevenson calls an “imaginative adjunct to the poem” (606). In that context, the headnote can be seen as “a prose imitation of the poem it introduces,” functioning “in part as argument and gloss” (Chayes 4). Such an understanding of the headnote reinforces the view that “Kubla Khan” is a poem...