Editing Kubla Khan (section)

=== 1970s–present ===
Criticism during the 1970s and 1980s emphasised the importance of the Preface while praising the work. Norman Fruman, in 1971, argued: "To discuss 'Kubla Khan' as one might any other great poem would be an exercise in futility. For a century and a half its status has been unique, a masterpiece ''sui generis'', embodying interpretive problems wholly its own...It would not be excessive to say that no small part of the extraordinary fame of 'Kubla Khan' inheres in its alleged marvellous conception. Its Preface is world-famous and has been used in many studies of the creative process as a signal instance in which a poem has come to us directly from the unconscious."<ref>Fruman 1971 p. 334</ref>

In 1981, Kathleen Wheeler contrasts the Crewe Manuscript note with the Preface: "Contrasting this relatively factual, literal, and dry account of the circumstances surrounding the birth of the poem with the actual published preface, one illustrates what the latter is not: it is not a literal, dry, factual account of this sort, but a highly literary piece of composition, providing the verse with a certain mystique."<ref>Wheeler 1981 p. 28</ref> In 1985, David Jasper praised the poem as "one of his greatest meditations on the nature of poetry and poetic creation" and argued "it is through irony, also, as it unsettles and undercuts, that the fragment becomes a Romantic literary form of such importance, nowhere more so than in 'Kubla Khan'."<ref>Jasper 1985 pp. 14, 19</ref> When talking about the Preface, Jasper asserted that it "profoundly influenced the way in which the poem has been understood".<ref>Jasper 1985 p. 43</ref> Responding in part to Wheeler in 1986, Charles Rzepka analysed the relationship between the poet and the audience of the poem while describing "Kubla Khan" as one of "Coleridge's three great poems of the supernatural".<ref>Rzepka 1986 pp. 109–110</ref> He continued by discussing the preface: "despite its obvious undependability as a guide to the actual process of the poem's composition, the preface can still, in Wheeler's words, lead us 'to ponder why Coleridge chose to write a preface...' What the preface describes, of course, is not the actual process by which the poem came into being, but an analogue of poetic creation as ''logos'', a divine 'decree' or fiat which transforms the Word into the world."<ref>Rzepka 1986 p. 112</ref>

During the 1990s, critics continued to praise the poem with many critics placing emphasis on what the Preface adds to the poem. David Perkins, in 1990, argued that "Coleridge's introductory note to "Kubla Khan" weaves together two myths with potent imaginative appeal. The myth of the lost poem tells how an inspired work was mysteriously given to the poet and dispelled irrecoverably."<ref name="Perkins p. 39">Perkins 2010 p. 39</ref> Also in 1990, Thomas McFarland stated, "Judging by the number and variety of critical effort to interpret their meaning, there may be no more palpably symbolic poems in all of English literature than "Kubla Khan" and ''The Ancient Mariner''."<ref>McFarland 1990 p. 42</ref> In 1996, Rosemary Ashton stated that the poem was "one of the most famous poems in the language" and claimed the Preface as "the most famous, but probably not the most accurate, preface in literary history."<ref>Ashton 1997 p. 111</ref> Richard Holmes, in 1998, declared the importance of the poem's Preface while describing the reception of the 1816 volume of poems: "However, no contemporary critic saw the larger possible significance of Coleridge's Preface to 'Kubla Khan', though it eventually became one of the most celebrated, and disputed, accounts of poetic composition ever written. Like the letter from the fictional 'friend' in the ''Biographia'', it brilliantly suggests how a compressed fragment came to represent a much larger (and even more mysterious) act of creation".<ref name="Holmes 1998 p. 435">Holmes 1998 p. 435</ref>

In 2002, J. C. C. Mays pointed out that "Coleridge's claim to be a great poet lies in the continued pursuit of the consequences of 'The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel' and 'Kubla Khan' on several levels."<ref>Mays 2002 p. 91</ref> Adam Sisman, in 2006, questioned the nature of the poem itself: "No one even knows whether it is complete; Coleridge describes it as a 'fragment,' but there is a case for doubting this. Maybe it is not a poem at all. Hazlitt called it 'a musical composition'...Though literary detectives have uncovered some of its sources, it remains difficult to say what the poem is about."<ref>Sisman 2006 p. 193</ref> In describing the merits of the poem and its fragmentary state, he said, "The poem stands for itself: beautiful, sensuous and enigmatic."<ref>Sisman 2006 p. 196</ref> During the same year, [[Jack Stillinger]] wrote that "Coleridge wrote only a few poems of the first rank – perhaps no more than a dozen, all told – and he seems to have taken a very casual attitude toward them...he kept 'Kubla Khan' in manuscript for nearly twenty years before offering it to the public 'rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the grounds of any supposed ''poetic'' merits'".<ref>Stillinger 2010 p. 157</ref> Harold Bloom, in 2010, argued that Coleridge wrote two kinds of poems and that "The daemonic group, necessarily more famous, is the triad of ''The Ancient Mariner'', ''Christabel'', and 'Kubla Khan.'"<ref>Bloom 2010 p. 3</ref> He goes on to explain the "daemonic": "Opium was the avenging daemon or ''alastor'' of Coleridge's life, his dark or fallen angel, his experiential acquaintance with Milton's Satan. Opium was for him what wandering and moral tale-telling became for the Mariner – the personal shape of repetition compulsion. The lust for paradise in 'Kubla Khan,' Geraldine's lust for Christabel – these are manifestations of Coleridge's revisionary daemonization of Milton, these are Coleridge's countersublime. Poetic genius, the genial spirit itself, Coleridge must see as daemonic when it is his own rather than when it is Milton's."<ref>Bloom 2010 p. 14</ref>