the rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge

Barbauld once told me that she admired The Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two faults in it – it was improbable, and had no moral. With this view I wrote the Ancient Mariner. In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least Romantic yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under supernatural agency.

In the one, incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge wrote: Herriot of Penicuik, Scotland, was unveiled at Watchet harbour. In September 2003, a commemorative statue, by Alan B. It is argued that the harbour at Watchet in Somerset was the primary inspiration for the poem, although some time before, John Cruikshank, a local acquaintance of Coleridge's, had related a dream about a skeleton ship crewed by spectral sailors.

Lewis' The Monk (a 1796 novel Coleridge reviewed), and the legend of the Flying Dutchman. The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth until Judgement Day for a terrible crime, found in Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, M. About my neck was hung.' : lines 139–142Īs they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffered the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference to tutelary spirits: 'Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape.īernard Martin argues in The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship.

The rime of the ancient mariner by samuel taylor coleridge