Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

William Henry Christie (Australian National University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1797

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Recommended Reading

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

was the first poem in his and William Wordsworth’s celebrated volume,

Lyrical Ballads

, published anonymously in September 1798. Like the conversation poems Coleridge was writing at the time — “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison”, “The Nightingale”, “Frost at Midnight” —

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

has a basic plot of transgression, isolation, and redemption, and is obsessed with love, belonging, and alienation. Both the conversation poems and the

Ancient Mariner

take isolation to be a kind of psycho-spiritual disease (dis-ease or “unquiet”) to be overcome by a mind working in concert with God and nature.

The Rime

, however, looks at these issues from the dark side, sliding effortlessly into the bizarre and…

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2911 words

Citation: Christie, William Henry. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 April 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23051, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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