{"id":253,"date":"2023-02-28T20:05:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T20:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=253"},"modified":"2023-02-28T20:05:51","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T20:05:51","slug":"fear-and-awe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/28\/fear-and-awe\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear and Awe"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s \u201cKubla Khan,\u201d he juxtaposes beautiful and petrifying scenery together in order to fully encapsulate the sublime.\u00a0 In the second stanza, he describes a deep \u201cchasm\u201d as \u201cromantic,\u201d and a \u201csavage\u201d place as \u201choly\u201d and \u201cenchanted\u201d (lines 12 and 14).\u00a0 He sets up the location to be frightening with its chasms, caverns, caves, etc, and yet describes these things to still be beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the romantic era, the sublime was present in many poets’ works, and this poem is no exception.\u00a0 In a romantic context, the sublime consists of an image of nature that is so grandiose or extreme in some way that it inspires strong emotions within the viewer, especially awe.\u00a0 \u201cKubla Khan\u201d embodies this by depicting such an extraordinary and breathtaking sight and playing up the emotion of fear in its descriptions while the speaker projects a romantic lens onto it.\u00a0 The petrifying diction of \u201cchasm\u201d and \u201csavage,\u201d as well as the later supernatural inclusions of \u201chaunted\u201d and \u201cdemon\u201d illustrate a scene that evokes a strong emotion, which is that of fear.\u00a0 Coleridge then takes this strong emotion and builds on it by weaving magnificent diction such as \u201choly,\u201d \u201cenchanted,\u201d and \u201cromantic\u201d between the frightening diction.\u00a0 Although this move diminishes the overall terror of the scenery, it does not do so to the overall emotion.\u00a0 Instead, Coleridge capitalizes on the readers\u2019 fear by turning it into awe.\u00a0 He writes the speaker to be a true romanticist, who looks at dangerous rushing waters, deep caves, and debris from a geyser and sees the beauty in it.\u00a0 Of course, it helps that the pleasure dome and its surroundings are not all treacherous territory but genuinely peaceful and wonderful.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Coleridge takes his depiction of the sublime in \u201cKubla Khan\u201d a step further by including the supernatural.\u00a0 The scenery of the pleasure dome is so hauntingly beautiful that it conjures the image of a \u201cwoman wailing for her demon lover,\u201d and on line 30, Kubla hears \u201cancestral voices prophesying war\u201d (line 16).\u00a0 These supernatural elements also emit a feeling both terrifying and romantic.\u00a0 Passionate wailing, demons, mysterious voices, and war are clearly frightening, and yet paired with the speaker\u2019s romantic lens, they only serve to further the sublime aspect of the pleasure dome.\u00a0 Through this lens, the image of lovers and of ancestors can actually be quite comforting.\u00a0 Combined with the description of the scenery, the pleasure dome\u2019s supernatural atmosphere does not inspire fear so much as it heightens its own extraordinary and astounding image.\u00a0 The significance of the supernatural or uncanny in this work is that it indicates that the picture of the pleasure dome is so amazing and astonishing that it transcends what is physically possible in the mortal plane.\u00a0 This location in Xanadu is almost literally unreal.<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201cKubla Khan,\u201d Coleridge blurs the lines between emotions of fear and awe, employing contrasting diction in order to heighten readers\u2019 intense emotions and embody the sublime.\u00a0 He understands that any intense reaction to nature can prove its magnificence, and wrote this poem with that knowledge.\u00a0 Coleridge utilizes the sublime as a tool to thoroughly make known the miraculous nature of the pleasure dome. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge\u2019s \u201cKubla Khan,\u201d he juxtaposes beautiful and petrifying scenery together in order to fully encapsulate the sublime.\u00a0 In the second stanza, he describes a deep \u201cchasm\u201d as \u201cromantic,\u201d and a \u201csavage\u201d place as \u201choly\u201d and \u201cenchanted\u201d (lines 12 and 14).\u00a0 He sets up the location to be frightening with its chasms, caverns, … Continue reading Fear and Awe<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}