Kubla Khan. Dream Visions in Romanticism

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (Englische Philologie), course: William Blake and the English Romantisicm, language: English, abstract: In his enigmatic poem Kubla Khan Coleridge initially reveals the source and framework of his literary work in the title itself: Kubla Khan: Or, A Vision in A Dream. A Fragment . Furthermore, the reader is provided with a detailed commentary on the genesis of the idea behind the poem and the moment of creation. In this paper, I aim to examine the importance of the dream vision with regard to the role of the poet with a Romantic state of mind. The fragility of a dream and the dreamer s limited ability to act freely in it evoke the role of the artist, creating something fragile and reliant on outside authority figures with full agency to move forward. That is, the dream vision can be seen as a mirror image of the creative process, intensifying and enhancing how we understand the challenges of the artist.