Samuel Taylor Coleridge ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, 1834

Readings Formalist Theological/Philosophical Psychological Ecocriticism Postcolonial Poststructuralist

Formalist Reading Formalism – A literary work is understood as it is in itself – imposes coherence upon a work The Romantics were formalists in that they challenged poetic conventions e.g. The purpose of the LB was “to awaken the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom”; they developed new forms such as lyrical ballad, conversation poem and revived traditional verse forms

Theological/Philosophical Reading, Perry in Wu, pp STC in 1790s a Unitarian: God is a pervasive and unifying energy; a communitarian (not a solitary and authoritarian creator – like Khan in KK); a Unitarian God “is immanently present in every aspect of nature, ‘an omnipresent creativeness’.” ‘All conscious Presence of the Universe!/Nature’s vast ever-acting Energy!/In will, in deed, Impulse of All to All!’ (‘Destiny of Nations’, ) ‘‘Tis the sublime of man,/Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves/Parts and proportions of one wond’rous whole’, and the whole unity is divine, for ‘’tis God/Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole’ (‘Religious Musings’ 134-6, ) This theology implies that everything, including evils, such as slavery, (of concern to STC who was living near, Bristol, a slave port) are for the best. This is problematic as can be seen in concentration on the question of evil in Rime.

Theological/Philosophical Reading 2 Theological reading/dominant reading: act of wickedness, punishment, repentance, atonement and the gloss reinforces this narrative of sin and restoration; sacramental vision of the universe controlled by a benevolent God (Warren) Albatross = a Christ like force that guides humanity from primitive and fearful superstitious origins, symbolised by snow and fog; moral significance of the Mariner’s unmotivated act is indicated in the contrast in symbolism in the poem. Water= superstition and the Albatross = natural guiding force of instinct; heat and dryness = post-Fall state of mental agony; crime = symbolic Fall from innocence caused by murderous self-will, consequence of which is emergence of a self- consciousness that leads to agonies and high aspirations and is accompanied by a knowledge of evil, symbolised in imagery of “rotting sea” and “slimy creatures”; blessing = return of natural instincts and elicits unforced forgiveness from God, symbolised by slipping of Albatross from neck; “purity” = rain water; freedom = breeze; return to solid, homely ground; the final lesson of the narrative is “total acceptance of God and his universe through humility, and love of man towards, beast.” (Knight)

Psychological Freudian: dream; implies that coherent readings can be disregarded; openness of interpretation Bio-psych – STC love and hatred for mother (symbolic of food and protection) – played out in conflicted feelings re the Albatross – desire and guilt (found a succession of mother substitutes throughout early adulthood) This is a poem about madness, delirium: “imagination modifies incoming sensation in terms of some predominant emotion” in this instance, fear. Mind here is cut off from “stabilising external realities” and “forsakes the familiar world for the freely associating and uncontrolled imagination.” Leads to misinterpretation of the world around him and to destruction of sense of personal identity. (Magnusson) Death of STC’s father at age of 8 – children who encounter death at a very early age are likely to experience guilt and repress grief – The Mariner struggles to understand his experience by means of moral framework but cannot, which the result that his experience seems irrational. Sole survivor Mariner experiences guilt, and attempts to heal psychological wound result in “heroic failure”. (Miall)

Ecocritical Reading, McKusick in Roe Definition: a green reading; developed in 1990s – Explores rootedness of poems in topography of particular areas – Interested in development of history of ideas re nature, contribution of art to study of nature e.g. Proto-ecological stances of W’wth, STC and PBS – Existential: seeks to elucidate artistic expression of environmental consciousness Lake poets – interested in poetry of place; saw natural world as a dynamic ecosystem; see also John Clare The end of nature seen in apocalyptic events of industrial revolution; see Blake’s “satanic mills”

Ecocritical Reading 2 Fictional narrative of ecological transgression Albatross – unmotivated act of aggression against all nature; death of albatross disrupts whole ecologyof nature Creatures of the Great Calm – Tropical section – ship becomes reef like, gathering an ecosystem to it – Repulsiveness of this ecosystem due to Mariner's misperception, not their intrinsic nature; after blessing = positive – Post-blessing: Mariner “must cross the boundaries that divide him from the natural world, through unmotivated acts of compassion between “man and bird and beast”” – Rime ponders ethical significance of dwelling on boundaries between different realms that are points of departure and arrival – Poem written in defense of “All things both great and small” Archaic words and the conservation of language – STC is endeavoring to construct a new ecolect; sees language as an organic system – Revisions “enhances the poems environmental themes through its conservation of lexical diversity” because “the extinction of an archaic word can have unforeseen repercussions upon the integrity of language”

Postcolonialist Reading, Fulford in Newlyn Takes popular narrative of exploration (STC maths tutor, William Wales was astronomer on Capt. James Cook second voyage ) – lectured against the slave trade Rime articulates mental and physical voyaging – inward self staged outwardly e.g. Enters into areas diseased by empire Whole world becomes infected by Mariner’s guilt – “conflation of physical disease with moral disease of colonialism” Rime more affective than didactic re slave trade (compare Rbt Southey, ‘The Sailor who served in the Slave Trade’ – curse after beating African slave; see also STC ‘Fears in Solitude’ l ); allows readers to “feel that attraction [to the powerful], made them share the terror, desperation of a man enslaved, in mind and body” STC has abandoned hope in success of political action (late 1790s British Jacobins distanced themselves from the excesses of the Terror) beginning to develop instead “an inward process of redemption achieved through contemplation of the divine presence in nature” (Kitson)

Poststructuralist Reading Definition: The difficulty of achieving secure knowledge of things in a decentred universe (where there is no centre or authority); meaning is endlessly deferred; looks for tensions and gaps in meaning within the text; texts are characterised by disunity rather than unity (Barry) Gloss attempts to impose order on interpretation of the poem, shaping a cause and effect moral reading. However, the poem’s moral seems to be that morality is permanently problematised, that it “appears to involve certainty only if you already know the full outcome of every action before you commit to it.” Tension between the epigraph (which suggests uncertainty – “at the same time we must be watchful for the truth and keep a sense of proportion, so that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night.”) works against the certainty of the gloss. Tension between the “language of self” and the “language of social discourse”. Note interruption of Guest in Part IV recalls the Mariner to his audience and begins to use the public mode again, assigning meanings, specifically Christian meanings to his experience. “The Mariner erects orthodox structures out of unorthodox experience”. This relates to STC life long concern with “the search for an adequate medium of expression that could accommodate the deepest demands of self without sacrificing either the authenticity of the intelligibility of the artistic product.” (Modiano)

Poststructuralist Reading 2 Wheeler Tension between gloss and narrative/s of the Mariner offer the reader a “threshold experience”; reader is kept in a heightened state of awareness, “hovering among possibilities”, creating a sense of “intense expectancy” that retains the quality of the core experience (rather than the certainty of the gloss). Gloss is an “ironised reductive reader”: the gloss “sketches out an inadequate response, in order to awaken the reader to the typical ways of misreading and misperceiving, [core text and gloss] builds an ironic or self conscious context around an aesthetic experience and renders it more completely accessible.” Gloss’s specification of time, space and causation contrast with evocative sensuous imagery of the text, the free imaginative spirit. Verse makes demands for openness and sets up a standard of imaginative response. Response of the Wedding Guest dramatises the transformative power of art. Each participant in the aesthetic situation potentially undergoes a genuine transformation.

Imagination The Coleridgean imagination is a conduit between experience and reason and enables the understanding to recognise and express truths that transcend understanding; imagination infuses with reason what the understanding has made of the senses. Imagination is the means by which humans are freed from the confines of a merely mechanical account of the world in order to participate in a sacramental universe

Unity STC favourite maxim: “Extremes meet.” STC: Unity is the “ultimate end of human Thought and human Feeling” Ironic that was so interested in unity but so much of work was not unified or incomplete this perhaps being “the result of his aptitude for entertaining at once perfectly incompatible positions.”

Random Questions What is the purpose of this poem? The gloss: how to read? Raises questions of order and control – theme of the poem – Written text emphasised – Read after or before verse – Across the gloss and back – Authoritative Frame – what does it do to the relationship of the reader to the poem? Does the reader identify with the Wedding Guest? What is the nature of reader’s participation in the text? Note language of entrancement “spell bound”, “glittering eye”; the narrative and narrative as heard are the creative product of the active imagination (Wheeler)

Language Techniques Formal elements – Ballad stanzas, usually of 4-6 lines – with exceptions – Odd lines are generally tetrameter – with exceptions – Rhymes generally ABAB or ABABAB – with exceptions – Many stanzas with couplets – Often internal rhyme in first line Pastiche of C17th English in gloss; faux medievalism/antiquarian veneer; voice or p.o.v or tone and role of this gloss? Figurative language: aural, visual, textural imagery, symbolism, metaphor, simile Aural elements: rhyme, rhythm, assonance, alliteration Narrative, including narrator; framing device Characterisation Dialogue Takes as model English ballads of Thomas Percy – oral, rural, primitive Structural elements - contrast Themes: reading dependant

Your extended response You need to show some awareness of the plethora of responses to Rime – it is perhaps one of the most raked over poems in the English language. You should indicate some sense of how the poem fits into Romantic ways of thinking, how it would be interpreted within Rom ways of thinking. You should indicate your personal response with an evaluation of the relative merits of an alternative reading/s Your overall response to STC – 2 focus poems and make some kind of link between the 2 focus poems e.g. “Coleridge is concerned with XXXX and this can be seen in both A and B...”

“The mind’s activity in contemplating nature can have a morally and spiritually beneficial effect on the owner of the mind.” Ashton, p. 107

Robert Southey, The Sailor, Who Had Served In The Slave Trade, 1799 In September, 1798, a Dissenting Minister of Bristol, discovered a Sailor in the neighbourhood of that City, groaning and praying in a hovel. The circumstance that occasioned his agony of mind is detailed in the annexed Ballad, without the slightest addition or alteration. By presenting it as a Poem the story is made more public, and such stories ought to be made as public as possible. STC, ‘Fears in Solitude: Written in April 1798, during the alarm of an invasion” From east to west A groan of accusation pierces Heaven! The wretched plead against us; multitudes Countless and vehement, the sons of God, Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on, Steamed up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence, Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs, And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint With slow perdition murders the whole man, His body and his soul!