What is the significance of the title of the poem ''Kubla Khan''?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Kahn" is named after a real Mongolian general who conquered China and lived on an elegant estate. This reference is highly significant for a couple of reasons. First, by naming his poem after a real Mongolian conqueror, Coleridge signifies that the topic of the poem (Xanadu, the pleasure dome) is meant to evoke images of China and the Far East. For English readers during Coleridge's day, this location would have been very exotic, and so Xanadu would have accordingly seemed to inhabit a fairy-tale realm. Additionally, by naming his poem of artistic creation after a highly successful conqueror and ruler, Coleridge also comments on the nature of creativity and imagination. If the real Kubla Kahn unified and ordered a vast realm, then the Kubla Kahn of the poem and his creation of Xanadu should be seen in a similar fashion. In other words, Coleridge's Kubla Kahn is not merely creating a pleasure dome; rather, he's ordering space and creating an organized system where there was formerly chaos. Thus, by basing his poem on a real Mongolian leader, Coleridge signifies that his Kubla Kahn not only occupies an exotic, otherworldly realm, but that his artistic creation is an essential ordering force that can unify and control many disparate components.