Romantic+Period

Links to sites that will be helpful in understanding this period:

[|Study Guide for Rime of the Ancient Mariner] More info on Mariner- The mariner's tale, told in the first-person, is set in a third-person narrative about a wedding. Show how the poet uses the first person narrative voice to make the tale more vivid and moving. examine the ideas of crime and punishment in the poem, and the poet's attitude to the natural world. The albatross is a “pious bird of good omen”; the mariner kills it for no reason (most readers in 1798, like people in some other countries today, would see nothing wrong in a man's killing of a bird); at first his fellow sailors blame him, then when the fog goes they approve of his action (and so share his guilt); when they are becalmed they change their minds again and blame him, hanging the dead bird around his neck; Death and Life-in-Death dice for the crew and the latter wins the mariner; when he returns to land, he finds he has to tell his tale; he ends his narrative by reminding the wedding guest of the need to love “man and bird and beast”; in the poem, the Polar Spirit is said to love the albatross, and two other spirits discuss the mariner's fate. To understand the poem's attitude to the natural world, you should look at the way the albatross is presented in the poem and the changing attitude of the mariner to the water snakes. The poem is full of strange, macabre, uncanny or //“Gothic”// elements. Gothic horror fiction was very popular at the time it was written. Discuss how these elements appear in the poem. You should consider This poem is very vivid, as the poet describes some spectacular scenes. These are often memorable in themselves but also stand for (symbolize) other things, for the people in the poem as much as the reader, sometimes. Elsewhere comparisons are made to describe things, as when the becalmed vessel is said to be “As idle as a painted ship/Upon a painted ocean”. Find some of the more striking or memorable images (there are lots of them!) and discuss the use the poet makes of them. The poet uses effects of rhyme, alliteration (same initial consonant) and pacing (as in the line "For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky" which suggests the slow passing of time and the mariner's weariness) and other effects of sound. Discuss how these are used by Coleridge to re-inforce ideas in the poem.
 * The narrative voice**
 * Themes of the poem**
 * The supernatural**
 * the strange weather;
 * the albatross as a bird of “good omen”;
 * Death and Life-in-death;
 * the spirit from “the land of mist and snow”, and the two spirits the mariner hears in his trance;
 * the angelic spirits which move the bodies of the dead men;
 * the madness of the pilot and his boy;
 * the mariner's “strange power of speech”,
 * and anything else of interest.
 * Imagery**
 * Sound effects**