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

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…

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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://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23051, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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