El Prefacio como estrategia de control en Kubla Khan
ISSN: 0210-9689
Year of publication: 1998
Issue: 21
Pages: 145-162
Type: Article
More publications in: ES: Revista de filología inglesa
Abstract
The bibliographical revision of Coleridge's Kubla Kan presented in this article shows how the critics have focused their attention upon some particular issues of the poem. These issues are basically its date of composition, the possibility of [Coleridge's] writing it under the effect of opium, its intertextualities, and its fragmentary nature. Moreover, the critics have mostly interpreted Kubla Khan following the author's poetic ideas as stated in Biographia Literaria. All these aspects appear in the Preface to the poem in some way or other. The conclusion is that this fact may have been Coleridge's strategy to direct the reading of the text.