George Whalley (Kubla Khan)
Coleridge was a confirmed symbolist (Kubla Khan)
Jones and Tydeman (Kubla Khan)
The overwhelmingly important fact about the ‘pleasure dome’ of the poem, with its surrounding park, is its artificiality.
Richard Holmes (Kubla Khan)
Like all the romantics, Coleridge was interested in exploring such extreme states of mind and feeling
A.M.Buchan
Wordsworth looked on Coleridge’s contributions as little more than a sop to popular nature and a lure to find readers for his own more valuable verses
Mark L Reed
talks of ‘the unique quality and value of the intellect’ of Coleridge.
Lord Byron
a wild and singularly beautiful and original poem (Christabel)
Humphrey House (Kubla Khan)
The poem manages to escape history and yet retains tradition
Kahleen Wheeler
if ever a poem reflected the concerns and interests of its age ‘Kubla Khan’ is that poem
George G. Watson (Kubla Khan)
Kubla Khan is a poem about the act of poetic creation
Edward E Bostetter
The most disturbing part of the poem is the fact that the Mariner and his crews fate relies on chance, Death and Life-in-death gamble for them
Kubla Khan - secondary imagination
Kubla Khan is a poem about the secondary imagination and the creative process. It celebrates Romantic imagery but also explores its dangers or fleeting nature
Kubla Khan - conscious and unconscious mind
Kubla Khan can be read with a psychoanalytical lens, exploring the conscious and the unconscious mind
Kubla Khan - power
Kubla Khan is a poem about power and man’s desire for power, including power over nature
Richard Gravil on the gender bias (Christabel)
Christabel deconstructs the gender bias and focuses on the marginalisation of women by the patriarchy
Jane Kelly Kosek (Christabel)
’Like ‘The Ancient Mariner’, ‘Christabel’ deals with the themes of evil and guilt in a setting pervaded by supernatural elements’
Richard Gravil on the narrator (Christabel)
Christabel and Geraldine’s story is interpreted through the male gaze, and the narrator is inferred to be male (shortened from original quote)
Richard Holmes
How strange, how captivating, how haunted Coleridge’s actual poems are
Jones and Tydeman (TAM, Kubla Khan, Christabel)
No one can now deny the serious moral nature of these poems
George Whalley (Ancient Mariner)
‘Certainly the mariner learned a sharp lesson’
‘Life in death meant to Coleridge a mixture of remorse and loneliness’
