IN THE AUTHOR’S HAND:: ARTIFACTS OF ORIGIN AND TWENTIETH-CENTURY READING PRACTICE

Abstract

Our contemporary fascination with origins, with the creative moment itself, goes back at least as far as the Romantic period, which, more than any other, enshrined the literary fragment as a relic of original artistic inspiration. Though Samuel Coleridge’s unfinished poem “Kubla Khan” is perhaps a familiar example, it is nevertheless worth retelling his account of that poem for what it conveys about romantic notions of creativity. When the poem was first published in 1816, Coleridge prefaced the text with a note explaining the circumstances of its composition and the reason the poem remained unfinished.¹ As he explained, he composed . . .