In the following excerpt from his book-length study of “Kubla Khan,” Lowes accepts Coleridge's contention that the poem was the product of an unconscious vision, and explicates the work's dreamlike imagery using evidence of the poet's reading.

In the following essay, Beer interprets “Kubla Khan” as a ferment of competing languages that dramatize the conflicts the author felt.

In the following excerpt, Beer offers perspectives on “Kubla Khan” as a work about poetic genius.

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.

In the following essay, Wheeler identifies “Kubla Khan” as a poem that reflected the concerns and interests of its age. The critic contends that by the time Coleridge wrote his poem, many of the ideas, imagery, symbols, and references to Orientalism had, in fact, already been assimilated into the English literary tradition.

In the following essay, Gerber traces a “fundamental dialectic principle” in “Kubla Khan,” featured in a coalescence of references to Kubla and the Roman mother-goddess Cybele, as well as in the structure of the poem itself.

In the following essay, Chayes interprets “Kubla Khan” as one of Coleridge's most significant early statements on the process of poetic creation.

In the following essay, originally published in 1966, Burke analyzes “Kubla Khan” in the context of Coleridge's other “mystery poems”—including “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Christabel”—explaining its linguistic references, mythic patterns of death and rebirth, and underlying unity.

In the following essay, Pearce proposes that Coleridge's notebooks, letters, and early poetry all contain details that are strongly reminiscent of the landscape in “Kubla Khan.”

In the following essay, Hedley discusses “Kubla Khan” as a poem written within the visionary mystical tradition that draws upon the central Christian image of the walled garden.

In the following essay, Patterson concentrates on the “daemonic” element in “Kubla Khan,” linking the work with a Platonic view of the inspired or “possessed” poet, which the critic contends is central to an interpretation of the poem.

In the following essay, Tapscott proposes that Coleridge's vision of Xanadu in “Kubla Khan” closely parallels Milton's Eden before the Fall, both in its description of the physical detail and in its moral ambiguity.

In the following essay, Bahti examines the language and structure of “Kubla Khan” and notes that it is both a fragment and a whole.

In the following essay, Bahti evaluates “Kubla Khan” as it encapsulates the self-fragmenting quality of Romanticism.

In the following essay, Strickland builds upon the thesis that “Kubla Khan” is a mythographic account of its own creation.

In the following essay, Perkins discusses the importance of the introductory note to “Kubla Khan,” noting that it guides the reader's interpretation of the work from start to finish.

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.

In the following essay, Bright surveys three ideas as the thematic sources of “Kubla Khan”—that art is spontaneous and unexpected, that art can only flourish in peacetime, and that great rulers create the peace that is essential for the creation of great art.

In the following essay, originally published in 1966, Watson sees “Kubla Khan” as “a poem about poetry” and a premonition of Coleridge's subsequent critical statements concerning the transformative qualities of the imagination and his definition of poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

In the following essay, Harding discusses the impact of the Old Testament on Romantic poetry, focusing specifically on “Kubla Khan” as an example.

In the following excerpt, Hamlin notes that “Kubla Khan” remains a challenge for critics because of its visionary and inspired text, and that while it is a poem that displays the Romantic power of imagination it is also a text that stands on its own as a poetic statement.

In the following essay, originally published in 1974, Magnuson theorizes that “Kubla Khan” shares many themes and images with Coleridge's “conversation poems.”

In the following essay, Milne provides an analysis of the symbolism in "Kubla Khan " and postulates that Xanadu is a metaphor of the human mind.

In the following essay, Kennard focuses on Coleridge's use of puns in “Kubla Khan.”

In the following essay, Rookmaaker proposes that the key to understanding “Kubla Khan” may lie as much in Coleridge's other writing at the time he composed the poem as it does in its sources.

Schneider's study is considered by many scholars one of the most important interpretations of "Kubla Khan" in the twentieth century. In the following excerpt, the critic considers the poem an incomplete fragment and discusses its form and texture, which evoke "the soul of ambivalence, oscillation's very self."

In the following essay, originally published in 1985, Frieden presents a rhetorical analysis of “Kubla Khan” as it both demonstrates and undercuts Coleridge's conversational poetic mode.

Australian-born Watson is a distinguished critic, editor, and lecturer of English at Cambridge University. He is the author of numerous studies of English Medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian literature and political history. In the following essay, Watson disputes interpretations of "Kubla Khan" as a "dream poem"; it is instead, he asserts, a lucid critique of the poetic imagination.

In the following essay, Hewitt suggests that “Kubla Khan” was Coleridge's attempt at evaluating established ideas of poetic creation and ultimately finding them wanting.

In the essay below, Hewitt identifies two distinctive themes present in "Kubla Khan " which reveal that the "poem as a whole displays a dilemma: it shows that the two extant theories accounting for poetic composition fail to provide a sufficient explanation of that phenomenon."

In the following essay, King analyzes “Kubla Khan” in the context of Carl Jung's theory of the structure of the human psyche.

In the following excerpted review originally published in Scourge and Satirist in 1816, the unsigned critic launches a diatribe against Coleridge's eccentric literary sensibility occasioned by the poet's offering of “Kubla Khan” as a fragmentary dream vision.

In the following essay, Ball comments on the ensuing debate over the meaning of “Kubla Khan,” particularly as it reflects on the past, present, and future of literary scholarship and textual interpretation.

In the following essay, originally published in 1961, Bloom views “Kubla Khan” as a work of romantic self-recognition, and of the reconciliation of opposites within the poetic imagination.

In the following essay, Chandler discusses various sources that may have inspired Coleridge to write a particular line in “Kubla Khan.”

In the following review of “Kubla Khan,” originally published in the Edinburgh Review, Moore notes the circumstances of the poem's composition and describes its soporific quality.

In the following excerpted review, the unsigned reviewer describes “Kubla Khan” as “below criticism.”

In the following excerpt orginally published in the Augustan Review in 1816, the unsigned reviewer remarks on Coleridge's ostensible dream composition of “Kubla Khan” and decries the lack of poetic merit in this “psychological curiosity.”