A textual and contextual reading of “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, focusing on the prominent images and theme in a simple conversational manner.

Kubla Khan is often described as a fragment. However, it is a coherent, straightforward elaboration of a poetic truth as well. It is a poem about creativity, poetic choices, man’s quest for paradise and his eternal struggle to attain immortality through creativity. This lecture is an attempt to understand the underlying meaning beneath the apparently chaotic imagery of the poem.