Poetic Craft and Metatextual Reflection in Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and Shelley’s ‘The Question’

The theme of artistic inspiration and creative production is explored in both Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and Percy Shelley’s ‘The Question’. This paper delves into the metatextual dimensions of these themes through the critical lens of New Formalism. Although the term ‘metatextuality’ was coined in the 20th century, the Romantic era’s preoccupation with poetic inspiration, imagination, and self-reflection renders many of its works implicitly metatextual. Both ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘The Question’ engage deeply with the processes and limitations of artistic creation, embedding within their form, structure, and content a commentary on poetry itself. These poems function on two levels: they present visionary, often dreamlike imagery while simultaneously acknowledging the failure of language and form to fully capture the poets’ imaginative impulse. This paper demonstrates how metapoetic meaning arises from both thematic content and formal elements such as meter, rhyme, sound devices, and structural shifts. Moreover, this paper explores the ways in which the poets suggest that truly accurate representation of artistic vision may be not only impossible but dangerous. Ultimately, this study reaffirms the value of formalist close reading in understanding Romantic poetry's engagement with its own making. By centering metatextuality as a key feature of Romantic poetics, it opens up new avenues for exploring poetic self-consciousness across other works of the period and beyond.