"The rime of the ancient mariner" di Coleridge

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Data:	22.11.2001
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“The Rime of the ancient mariner” di Coleridge

It is the story of a crime and its punishment narrated by the protagonist himself an old mariner condemned to expiate his crime by travelling from land to land telling his story and teaching through his example, love and reverence for all God’s creatures.
The poem is divided into several parts each ending with a hint at the crime and each constituting a new stage in the progress from crime to punishment.

The rime of Coleridge is characterised by the movement of the narration from realism to mysterious and to supernatural events.
The poem is written in the form of the ancient ballads even if not all the stanzas have four lines, the typical rhyme scheme is not respected and the moral at the end is more explicit than in most ballads.
It’s important to say that there are a mix of real and unreal elements:
Real elements:
- The real elements are for example the wedding feast, the hints at the precise position of the sun in the sky, the hints at the mariner’s native country ,…
Unreal elements:
- Nature is perceived as deformed and intensified by the memory of the past fears and horrors.
- The poem is full of unearthly characters as ghosts, spirits, angels, souls,..
- The ghost ship is driven by mysterious forces.
The unreal world where is settled the poem provides the ideal settings for the supernatural elements and events spread throughout the poem such as:
1) The sense of mysterious introduced:
- By the mariner with is sudden strange intrusion in the feast, his appearance with hypnotic power, his way of speaking.
- By the albatross which comes from nowhere and it’s accompanied by strange phenomena.
2) The hint at medieval and oriental superstitions
3) The presence of unnatural creatures (sea monsters, spirits, angels and seraphins)
4) The description of unnatural events
Nature has a great importance in the poem because it can resent, judge, punish and respond.
Unlike Wordsworth, Colleridge doesn’t find happiness and consolations in it.
Collerdige uses also a sort of ‘Music’ in the work cause he uses words like alliterations, assonances, onomtopeia, repetition,…
There is also a deep simbolic meaning in the work
The poem in fact can be read in three ways:
- Religious
- Social
- Poetic
The voyage of the mariner can be represent the life of Man, the mariner a sort of Everyman, the albatross the end of the link with life when is killed by the mariner.
So the poem can be an allegory of life where the crew represents mankind, the albatross the pact of love that unites all God’s creatures and the ship a microcosm where the evil of a single person has a repercussions on others has often happens in life.