V5 14 Feb The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 5

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

by 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Make sure you have your Alquin and a notebook on your  table and a pen in your hand. 

Literary devices

Make sure you know the following terms (I may add to this list later on):

metaphor	ballad
simile	meter
sonnet	alliteration
iambic pentameter	rhyme scheme

Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 - 1834

• Youngest son of a clergyman in Devon
  
• Not wealthy, especially after his father died.
  
• Bright pupil, studied at Cambridge
  
• Addicted to opium (and alcohol and women)
  
• Wrote The Lyrical Balads, together with Wordsworth,
     and thus started the Romantic Period
  
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
  
• Turbulent life: discharged from army, opium-addiction, bad health, bad relationship with his wife, financial problems, unable to hold a job.
  

Background information

- Longest poem, major poem by Coleridge

- Published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads

- Along with other poems considered the beginning of modern poetry and Romanticism 1800-1830 (the everyday man is the subject, emotion and the supernatural)

- Art ballad

- Nature is described

Background information

BALLAD:  a NARRATIVE of unknown authorship passed on in the oral tradition. It often makes use of repetition and DIALOGUE. A ballad whose author is known is called a literary ballad.

ART BALLAD: imitates the style of a medieval ballad, but with contemporary elaborations and features. 

The poem

• The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner recounts the experiences of a sailor after a long sea voyage. 
• The man stops a wedding guest on his way to the ceremony, at first the wedding guest doesn't want to listen but something grabs hold of his attention making him listen to the story (even though he had mixed feelings about it)
• Story within a story (link-and-frame)

Similar stories

• The Wandering Jew
• The Flying Dutchman (Vliegende Hollander) 

Part 1

- Wedding guest

- Story begins: the Antarctic

- Albatross= good/holy, lucky omen

- The Mariner shot the Albatross

- The crew is angry at the Mariner

Part 2

- Albatross was suddenly seen as a bad omen

- Things started to go south (crew regretted praising the killing of the Albatross)

- Sea filled with fire and slimy creatures

- Ship got stuck

- Crew didn't have water anymore

Part 3

- Ghost-ship appears

- On board: Death and a beautiful woman called Life-in-Death

- Casting dice to decide upon the fate of the ship

- Life-in-Death: mariner

- Death: the rest of the crew

Part 4

- Mariner accepts he's cursed

- Tried to pray, but wasn't possible until he accepted God's creatures/creations

- He gets back to England led by the crew possessed by spirits

Part 5/end

- Everything changes for the better: Mariner is saved and is forgiven by a holy man. 

- Mariner has to tell the story over and over again (his penance).

- God has made/created us all, so respect nature and all of creation.

Homework Friday

1. Answer the questions on the Ancient Mariner (p. 25) and place in Teams
You can skip the additional assignment.