IMAGERY IN SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGES KUBLA KHAN

What function does it play in literature
What function does it play in poetry

Thesis statement In the Samuel Taylor Coleridges Kubla Khan imagery is used as a means of achieving a dreamy and somewhat surreal quality to the poem other than this, it is also used to make the poem more vivid because most of what is described in the poem are mythological or fictional, so imagery makes these immaterial objects more tangible for the reader.

Imagery as a means of achieving tone in Kubla Khan
Definition and function of tone
Textual evidence
Imagery as a means of achieving concreteness in Kubla Khan
Textual evidence
Conclusion

Unlike in the visual arts, literature lacks what is known as visual stimulus.  To compensate for this lack, literature uses a tool known as imagery.  Imagery is the means by which words, whether in fiction or poetry, work to initiate the creation mental images.  In poetry, the mind is left with the job of creating images to support what is being said in the text.  Essentially, poetry has some aspect of interactivity in that it does not spoon feed the audience but leaves some aspects of its appreciation for the audience to create.  More importantly, imagery plays various roles in poetry and each of these roles achieve a particular end which is always intentional as poetry needs to be purposive.  The poet is always aware of what heshe wants to achieve in hisher poetry and consciously uses devices to achieve these intentions.  In the Samuel Taylor Coleridges Kubla Khan imagery is used as a means of achieving a dreamy and somewhat surreal quality to the poem other than this, it is also used to make the poem more vivid because most of what is described in the poem are mythological or fictional, so imagery makes these immaterial objects more tangible for the reader.

On the matter of achieving a dreamy and surreal quality to the poem, imagery in effect sets the tone for the poem.  This means that as opposed to making the poem bland and lacking of character, imagery gives it an identity or a personality on its own.  This is evident in a few of the lines from the poem which use imagery to achieve the dreamy or surreal feel, or more formally the tone of the poem.  For instance, we have the line, Through caverns measureless to man  Down to a sunless sea (5-6) which describes where Xanadu is located.  Here we see that the lines present an image of an eternally deep cave where an underground sea exists.  While the underground sea is believable, a cavern or a cave that cannot be measured by human technology is something that is out of the ordinary and defies the laws of nature.  So, instead of viewing a regular, ordinary underground lake located within a cave, the reader would see a dark fathomless abyss in hisher minds eye.  This image serves to situate the setting of the poem to be somewhere that does not actually exist on earth but probably only in dreams or the imagination.  Another interesting line in the poem that achieves this same tone for the poem is, And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree. (9-10)

Again, this line offers contrasts of realistic imagery and mythological imagery.  What a reader sees here is a beautiful garden and in that garden there are incense-bearing trees.  Of course, as the rule of metaphor dictates, the image has first to be true on the literal level before it can be true on the metaphorical level and this rule of thumb may apply to this line in that it could represent trees bearing fragrant flowers.  However, because of the use of incense which is a ceremonial implement, and with the common knowledge that incense does not grow on trees and is derived from the sap of trees, one is given the mental image that the tree actually bears fruit that burns to release an incense-like scent. This particular image gives the line an unnatural tone and therefore achieves the tone that the poet would like to achieve.

Now, to the matter of imagery making the immaterial more tangible to the reader, the poem too has a slew of textual evidences to this effect.  The line, A mighty fountain momently was forced  Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst  Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, (19-21) for instance, the first image that comes to mind is that of a powerful geyser that shoots up to explode with shards of ice flying through the air, but this does not become consistent with the place referred to in the poem located underground in a deep, unfathomable cavern.  Hence, this geyser becomes immaterial or impossible but because of the way it is presented and with the vivid description of this particular phenomenon it becomes more tangible to the mind of the reader.  Another line that has the same effect is, Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean (26-28) Taking this particular line in the context of the unfathomable caverns, one would easily wonder, how could the poet know that the rivers reached an area that was not accessible to man  So, with this question in mind, the line becomes immaterial but because of the images conjured in the line, these being a river flowing endlessly terminating in an ocean that is lifeless, the reader can easily associate the line with something that exists in real life and so gives it its intangibility or concreteness.

Based on the textual evidence presented it is clear that in the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge imagery is able to achieve two major things that are necessary to poetry, one is tone and the second is concretization.  These two elements of poetic expression serve to make the poem accessible to the reader and therefore bring down the elite art of poetry to a level easily appreciated by the ordinary reader.