The Composition and Publication History of Samuel T. Coleridges Kubla

The Myth of Fragmentation - The Composition and Publication History of Samuel T. Coleridges Kubla khan Although the exact date remains unknown, it is believed that Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his poem Kubla Khan sometime in the fall of 1797 and began revisions of it in the early spring of 1798. Interestingly, although no original manuscript has been found, the Crewe ms of Kubla Khan was discovered in 1934. Currently, the Crewe Manuscript is the earliest know version of Kubla Khan and is believed to have been written around 1810. After Lord Byrons zealous response to Kubla Khan, Coleridge published the poem for the first of all time in May of 1816 under Byrons publisher John Murray. While the poem was initially bound with two of his other poems Christabel and Pains of Sleep, Kubla Khan was then published in 1828 within Coleridges collection Poetical Works. The final publication of Kubla Khan during Coleridges lifetime came in 1834, when a additive version of Poetical Works was i ntroduced, which included some of Coleridges early, unpublished works.When Kubla Khan was first published in 1816, contemporary reviewers noted the poems fragmentary nature and spoke of its nonsensical style, imagery, and content. The poem was, in a sense, viewed as not a wholly meaningful poem, but only nonsensical music. More recent studies by scholar E. S. Shaffer asserted that Coleridge intended for Kubla Khan to be a part of his project to create a new human body of epic poem that was to be called The Fall of Jerusalem. Shaffer believes that Coleridge was unable to complete this epic project, and consequently, left Kubla Khan as an epic fragment that has bred a myth of fragmentation that has followed the poem since its initial publi... ...w York Charles Scribners Sons, 1972.Google Image Search. Online. easy at http//images.google.com.Holmes, Richard. Coleridge Early Visions (1772-1804). New York Pantheon Books, 1989.Holmes, Richard. Coleridge Darker Reflections (1804-1834) . New York Pantheon Books, 1998.Lindgren, Agneta. The Fallen World in Coleridges Poetry. Sweden Lund University Press, 1999.Newlyn, Lucy (editor). The Cambridge Companion to Coleridge. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2002.Samuel Taylor Coleridge Archive. Online. Available at http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/stcColeridge/stc.htmlStillinger, Jack. Coleridge & Textual Instability The Multiple Versions of the Major Poems. New York Oxford University Press, 1994.Supplement to the S. T. Coleridge Archive. Online. Available at http//www.mindspring.com/mtiefert/poetry/coleridge.html