SOURCE: Hoffpauir, Richard. “‘Kubla Khan’ and the Critics: Romantic Madness as Poetic Theme and Critical Response.” English Studies in Canada 2, no. 4 (winter 1976): 402-22.

In the following essay, Hoffpauir surveys critical estimates of “Kubla Khan” since its first publication, arguing that the poem is “imagistically incoherent,” formally “imprecise,” and fails to live up to the designation of great poetry by which generations of scholars have regarded it.

When the October 1974 issue of PMLA contained yet another article on “Kubla Khan” with the all too familiar subtitle, “Toward Interpretation,” I was reminded of and impressed by the continued solvency of the “Kubla Khan” industry. My researches had confirmed my suspicion that it is one of the most discussed poems in our literature and, as Charles Patterson, the writer of the PMLA article, began, “Perhaps no other poem of the time … has evoked more widely diverging views of its meaning.”¹ The...