Orientalism Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Drew

Critical Essay by John Drew

SOURCE: “‘Kubla Khan’ and Orientalism,” in Coleridge's Visionary Languages: Essays in Honor of J. B. Beer, edited by Tim Fulford and Morton D. Paley, D. S. Brewer, 1993, pp. 41-47.

In the following essay, Drew discusses elements of Orientalism and neo-Platonism in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem “Kubla Khan,” speculating on possible influences from Coleridge's reading.

‘… the images rose up before him as things with           a parallel production of the correspondent expressions …’

Preface to ‘Kubla Khan’

A landmark among attempts to take Coleridge up on his challenge to explore ‘Kubla Khan’ as a psychological curiosity was John Livingston Lowes' book, The Road to Xanadu (London, 1927). While valuing this book as a pioneering study of the poem in terms of what Coleridge was reading, John Beer suggested that Lowes was mistaken in his assumption that, during the composition of ‘Kubla Khan’, images became associated in Coleridge's mind on...
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