by Joshua Jones

Created on: February 07, 2009   Last Updated: February 14, 2010

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of Britain's most famous poets, and his most famous piece "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"one of the best known literary ballads in English literature. Coleridge, as one of the first Romantic poets (with Wordsworth and Blake), favored more democratic poetic forms. The "Literary Ballad", a lyric poem intended to mimic the folk poems of the common people accomplishes this democratic urge. The central from of the literary ballad is a quatrain (four line stanza) with an "a/b/c/b" rhyme scheme and alternating lines of four and three iambs (a pair of sylables, first unaccented and second accented). This rhyme scheme is only loosely followed, and heavy metrical substitution is common and often encouraged. This form was widely recognizable and has a characteristic lilt that is easily discerned, using the rhythms known to the common man. One of the characteristic features of the literary ballad, the dialogue with few introductory phrases, is also a very prominent piece of the "Rime".

Coleridge, though, as was common with many Romantic poets, was known for stretching this structure, and periodically adds lines, stanzas, and syllables to his poem where he feels it necessary. He makes almost excessive use of literary devices such as onomatopoeia ("cracked and growled...roared and howled..."), alliteration ("furrow followed free"), and repetition ("alone, alone, all all alone..."). The use of these devices hold true to the tradition of making literary ballads appear from a past era by associating the poem with the scops (wandering poets) of Anglo-Saxon literature. Not only does Coleridge use the typical rhyme scheme of the literary ballad, but he also uses extensive rhyme within his lines ("and through the drifts, the snowy clifts") in order to add to the speed and closeness of the lines.

The Romantic poets had various views on the expression of the supernatural and natural. Coleridge attempted to show the natural through supernatural events. His poem embodies this by alegorizing the nature of man's life with such supernatural events, as ghost ships and saint-like albatross.

The story is an allegory on the life of man and his eternal struggle for salvation. The mariner shoots a friendly albatross (which is subsequently hung about his neck like a cross in a sign of clemency) with his crossbow, whereat the ship is followed by a spirit, seeking revenge for the bird. A series of strange events follows

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>