Imagination and Fancy: Unveiling the Creative Faculty of the Mind in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”

The main objective of this article is to unveil the power of imagination and fancy in Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”. The poem charms the readers with the use of fancy while presenting the graphic scene of Xanadu, where the Chinese emperor, Kubla Khan, built his majestic palace. The article interprets the power of fancy as an arbitrary process that conjoins the ideas about Kubla Khan’s palace together that remain in distance and unite them to create something fanciful. The tapestry of the poem looks appealing when the play of fancy is in the first stanza. The real transformation with the awe and sublimity springs when the poem makes the show of primary and secondary imagination by fusing the diverse concepts of holy and savage, enchanted and fearful, sunny dome and caves of ice to create something new and innovative that is beyond the ordinary level of mind. In its extremity, the poem frenzies the reader with its poetic spirituality by supplying the milk germinating from paradise. This article implements qualitative methods and interpretive strategies to unravel these ideations of fancy and imagination in the poem. The purposive sampling method has been applied to collect concepts related to fancy and imagination in the poem. Close reading helps to interpret the instances of fancy and imagination applied in the poetry. This interpretation also opens a new perspective to unravel the poetic imagination in poetry in general.