S T Coleridge As A Supernatural Poet Viewed From The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner Essay
While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (s t coleridge as a supernatural poet viewed from the rime of the ancient mariner )
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!
S.T.COLERIDGE’S TREATMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINE
PURWARNO, A Lecturer of the Faculty of Literature
Islamic University of North Sumatra, Medan, Indonesia
INTRODUCTION
The Ancient Mariner is a tale of a curse which the narrator, the Mariner himself, brings upon himself and his companions by killing an Albatross without reason. Coleridge’s power of handling the supernatural is like the pure music of his verse. The moral of the poem is one of all-embracing love. This poem is full of moral teachings for human beings. Humphry House expresses his agreement with three great critics, Dr. Tillyard, Dr. Bowra, and Robert Penn Warren, that the poem has a very serious moral and spiritual on human life. The moral of the ancient Mariner’s story is that one should love all God’s creatures.
Coleridge is regarded as the greatest poet of the supernatural in English literature and The Ancient Mariner is regarded as a masterpiece of supernatural poetry. His supernatural is controlled by thought and study. Cazamian says, ”The very center of Coleridge art lies in his faculty of evoking the mystery of things, and making it actual, widespread, and obsessing. Even better than Wordsworth, he knows how to handle that species of the supernatural whose essence (spirit) is entirely psychological…. The supernatural element in The Ancient Mariner is a hallucination, the outcome of remorse; by the most sober of method.” His skill in dealing with the supernatural in this poem is two-fold: first, he has fully achieved his aim of making the supernatural appear to be natural; and, second, he has employed suggestive, psychological, and refined (sophisticated) methods of producing the feelings of mystery and horror in the poem, not crude and sensational like that of the writers before him, i.e. Horace, Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe, and Monk Lewis.
DISCUSSION
The greatness of The Ancient Mariner lies chiefly in the technique by which the supernatural has been made believable and convincing. There are, no doubt, a number of impossible, incredible, and fantastic situations in the poem, such as: the mesmeric (magnetic) power in the mariner’s gaze, the sudden appearance of the mysterious skeleton ship, the spectre woman and her mate, the coming back to life of the dead crew, the seraph-band making signals to the land, the sudden sinking of the ship, and the polar spirit commenting on or influencing the course of events. But this supernatural phenomena are so skillfully blended with the perfectly believable and natural phenomena that the whole looks real. The sun shinning brightly at the outset, the mist and snow, the freezing cold of the polar regions, the floating ice bergs floating in the water, the torrid (very hot) fierceness of stagnant water, the slimy things crawling on the sea, the moon going up the sky, the roaring wind, the rainfall—such are the natural phenomena in the poem.
The realistic effect is enhanced by a description of the state of mind of the ancient mariner; that is how he tried to pray but he could not, how lonely he felt on a wide, wide sea, how he wanted to die but in vain (useless), how he suffered mental and spiritual anguish (torture). This psychological study of the mariner adds to the realistic effect because we are made to feel that any man would suffer in the same way under similar circumstances. Again, the details of the ship’s voyage have such a diary-like air that we accept them as a faithful recording of facts. There is, too, the logic of cause and effect in the poem. The punishment and torture have a convincing cause behind them. The realistic effect achieved by Coleridge in The Ancient Mariner is one his great achievements which makes the poem not only convincing and exciting but also in some sense a criticism of life.
There are a large number of situations and episodes in The Ancient Mariner, which fill us either with a sense of mystery or a feeling of horror or with both. The first situation that strikes terror in the heart of the Mariner (and also the reader) is the appearance of the skeleton-ship. When this skeleton-ship is sighted in the distance, the sailors feel happy to think that they will now get water to quench their burning thirst. But in a few moment they discover the reality of this ship. The description of the ship with its “ribs” and its “gossamere-like sails” fill us with terror. It is a strange mystery that this ship should sail on the sea without wind and without a tide, while the Mariner’s ship stands still “like a painted shop upon a painted ocean”. Obviously it is a supernatural force, which drives the ship, and the crew also consists of supernatural characters.
The feeling of terror is heightened when a reference is made to the crew of this ship. The crew consists of Death and Life-in-Death. But Coleridge creates the sense of horror in this poem not by describing a direct and crude description but by employing suggestive and psychological methods. For instance, he does not describe the physical features of the spectre woman and her death mate or other external phenomena at length, but he simply portrays the effect of those external things on the mariner’s mind. The appearance of Life-in-Death is described in the following three lines:
Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy.
(Lines 190-92)
These three lines are followed by these two:
The night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.
(lines 193-94)
Coleridge, after giving us only three lines of description, conveys the horror by saying that the sight of her would have the effect of freezing a man’s blood. In other words, he leaves it to us to imagine for ourselves the horrible appearance of Life-in-Death that personifies the unspeakable torture of a man who cannot die. Coleridge merely offers a few suggestions to be developed by the reader himself. The effect of the skeleton-ship with Death and Life-in-Death on board again conveyed to us by the following two lines:
Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
My life-blood seemed to sip!
(lines 204-5).
That is, instead of giving us a detailed description of the whole horrible sight, Coleridge refers to the effect of that horrible sight upon the mind of the Mariner and says that fear sipped his life-blood. Another situation that produces horror in the poem is the death of the...
MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 26 May, 2012 from
<http://essaymania.com/170718/s-t-coleridge-as-a-supernatural-poet-viewed-from-the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner->
More College Papers
Health and safety, energy, non domestic essay
Legally reportable accidents
Type of accident Number for year end 31st March 2010 Number for year end 31st March 2011
Employees: Number of work-related fatalities 0 0
Work-related \'major\' accidents / injuries 77 56
Work-related \'over three-day\' lost time accidents / injuries 321 315
Safety Str
Cleveland is My City essay
December 1st, 2011
“Cleveland is My City”
For a city ranked the most miserable city to live in, Cleveland sure is an enjoyable place to live. It is true that Cleveland has faced job re-locations and serious economic struggles, the past few years for Cleveland haven’t been the best. Howev
IQ analysis essay
An IQ Analysis
Does IQ really determine how smart a person is? Is IQ reliable, dependable, accurate,
or even racist? Do people with a higher IQ actually have more success than people with a
lower IQ? Should schools be developing ways and focusing on raising a student’s IQ? These
may