Show How “Kubla Khan” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” Create Imaginative Effects, Rather Than Specific Themes and Meaning. Describe Your Response to the Poems and Explain How the Writers Create It.

Show How “Kubla Khan” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” Create Imaginative Effects, Rather Than Specific Themes and Meaning. Describe Your Response to the Poems and Explain How the Writers Create It.

  • Submitted By: jp607
  • Date Submitted: 03/04/2009 10:28 AM
  • Category: English
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Show how “Kubla Khan” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” create imaginative effects, rather than specific themes and meaning. Describe your response to the poems and explain how the writers create it.

Both John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge create strong imaginative effects, which in turn overshadows the specific themes and meanings of the actual words of the poem.

“Kubla Khan” starts outs with bringing up lots of strong, vivid images into the reader’s head. “Down to the sunless sea” provides a great imaginative effect. This is achieved because of the alliteration used “sunless sea”. This may not mean anything to the reader in terms of its words, but it provides the image for Coleridge to tell his story. The image of the “sunless sea” is then taken away further down the poem with the line “Enfolding sunny spots of greenery”. Coleridge again uses alliteration “sunny spots” to bring in the imaginative effect of his poem and not necessarily focusing on the themes and meaning of his words at this point.

Coleridge starts to make the poem go into a darker atmosphere. Coleridge writes “…By woman wailing for her demon lover!” Again the use of alliteration here “women waling” gives the imaginative of a dark and disturbing place. Coleridge evens writes this 2 lines before by stating “A savage place”. Again these words have no specific themes but the imaginative effect of the alliteration again, on the reader is very strong.

Coleridge further down the poem starts to use assonance. Coleridge writes, “And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething”. There is a particular sound link between “ceaseless” and “seething”. The words make quite a harsh sounding noise with emphasis on the “se”. Again the harsh sounding noise provokes the readers to think of the savage place that Coleridge is taking. Coleridge uses assonance later on to provoke imaginative effects from the reader, rather than relying on the specific themes and meanings of the words in his poem....

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