Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a romantic poem that describes a mongol leader's summer home and all the luxuries it held, however the oasis was not as pleasurable as we were led to believe. In Romantic poetry we often see themes of nature and effusive language, however when we look through a postmodern lens everything changes. We start to see this poem as something completely different, we start to see maximalism, temporal distortion, and historiographic metafiction!
Summary of Element One - Maximalism
Kubla Khan is a longer than average poem. This is most likely due to the utilization of maximalism. The pleasure palace is described for thirty-six lines of the poem,
and each element has been thoroughly explained. The imagery is so detailed that you can picture every element of the mongol leader's palace. We see this when Coleridge speaks about the “mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!” and the “So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.”. Originally these details were used to convey the celebration of nature, however when we look at this with a postmodern perspective we can see the extensive elaboration on scenery. We see this same type of maximalism in Tenacious D’s "Tribute", the video featured over the top imagery such as the fight between the devil, Jack Black, and Tenacious D.
Summary of Element Two - Temporal distortion
Kubla Khan has a few instances of temporal distortion. This occurs in order to accentuate the ending of the poem where the narrator has a vision of “A damsel with a dulcimer”. The author did this to kind of shift perspectives and explore this vision about the “Abyssinian maid”.
The reason for jumping forward in time was most likely to test the limits of creativity and had most likely been to allude to the extended metaphor Kubla Khan features, which happens to be the sense of failure the narrator had been feeling. The narrator feels extremely uninspired at the thought of building Kubla Khan’s palace because he cannot accomplish this. This leads to a sense of loss because he is not able to recreate the song required to build the palace even though he would if he had the “music loud and long,”. These details were included to elevate the romantic quality of effusive language and sublime; however the postmodern aspects are extremely evident once you know what you’re looking for! I noticed an aspect of temporal distortion in Elissa Bassist's "Writer Math" because she showed how time jumped around and then blended together such as when she mentioned “Morning ≈ afternoon; nighttime ≈ morning; afternoon ≈ nighttime; there is no such time as 9 a.m”. Although the temporal distortion doesn't present itself in the same way it's close enough rightttt?
Summary of Element Three - historiographic metafiction
Historiographic metafiction is a big postmodern element in Kubla Khan, While the capital of Xanadu did technically exist this poem alters history by making a remark regarding “A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!” These caves and a lot of other scenery details within the poem weren’t actually real; they were either made up for the
plot of the story, or exaggerated as much as possible. Some great examples of this are the “stately pleasure-dome” and the “Alph, sacred river” because there’s no historical proof that this “pleasure-dome” existed on this sacred river and even if it did the poem probably exaggerated this detail. Xanadu was a real city from 1263-1273 so if this place actually existed then how pleasurable could this place actually be. "Orestes" by A Perfect Circle is a great example of this because the band sings about the Greek myth of Orestes which is about a son killing his own mother. If you think about it this is typical man
behavior, Orestes probably just lost a round of fortnite! The song alters history by mentioning how the singer wanted to “Snip away and sever this umbilical residue” because in reality the actual events described anything regarding an umbilical cord.
Conclusion
Each genre shows that maximalist and historiographic elements can help the plot while temporal distortion can allow us to see perspectives from different angles. All of these assist in elevating nature's many different wonders and seeing the beauty within the story.
WORK CITED!!!
