Coleridge
He's remembered for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)
His contribution to Romantic poetry is found in a return to the magical and supernatural
While Wordsworth sought poetry in nature, in the everyday and the commonplace, Coleridge ventured into the realm of the mervellous
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: form
It is a narrative poem, in archaic ballad form
It is divided into seven parts introduced by a short summary of the story
In 1816 the poem was integrated with short marginal glosses to the left of the stanzas describing what happens in the narrative
Coleridge uses the ballad form to reflect the Romantics' interest in the Medieval past and the traditional theme of supernatural events. But it differs in the length of the story, the symbolic description of the natural landscape and the moral at the end
Coleridge's ballad form lacks the regularity which characterises the typical ballad, has fewer repetitions and does not make use of refrains
The stanzas vary in length, usually 4 or 6 lines but occasionally as long as 9 lines
The poem is rich in sound effects, internal rhyme, alliteration, archaic words, similes and personification
They contribute to creating a hypnotic atmosphere in which the reader, just like the wedding guest, cannot choose but hear the Mariner's tale
There is a constant justaposition of ordinary experience and supernatural events in an alternation of the real and the unreal
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: interpretation and analyse
It is a study of guilt, suffering and expiation
On a religious level we can see the killing of the albatross as a sin against Nature and God
Having travelled with a pure soul through the sea, the Mariner's sinful act brings him into a hellish world of adverse nature and strange, supernatural creatures
His long, tormented return journey is a process of suffering with a turning point in his personal story marked by the moment when he blesses the snakes, recognising them as a part of God's creation
Salvation comes with his return to his homeland, where the final element of his "confession" consists in the penance of being compelled ti wander and continually retell his story, a process which also holds the moral lesson of love for all God's creation
On an artistic level the Mariner is an artist who moves beyond the world of everyday experience into a terrifying realm of the fantastic and supernatural
As he returns to the world of everyday reality, he tells his story to a common man
The artist-Mariner has lost his innocence but has gained knowledge and insight which he can communicate to others
The price of this is that he must accept his condition of otherness as a wandering outcast in society
Elements of the physical description of the Mariner ("long grey beard and glittering eye", "greybeard loon") inspire fear in those who meet him ("I fear thee and thy glittering eye")
It can be read also as a moral tale revealing what may happen if human beings break the laws of nature
The poem opens with the representation of the perfect unity between Man and Nature, symbolised by the idea of the wedding
When the Mariner unexpectedly kills the albatross (a benign representation of Nature and of its generosity towards human beings) the natural order of things is irreparably destroyed
At this point Nature itself reacts and threatens the life of the Mariner, who excluded himslef from the order of Nature through an act of arrogance
The supernatural creatures that appear after the killing are a symbolic representation of Nature's primordial forces, which can destroy human beings if they show disrespect towards them
Life is brought back to the world only when the Mariner openly acknowledges his disrespectful behaviour towards Nature and restores the order of things with an act of generosity