The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: A Lyrical Ballad and Allegory of Romanticism, Exams of Poetry

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“THE RIME OF THE

ANCIENT

MARINER”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Remember: this poem appeared in a book of poetry called Lyrical Ballads, published in

Two friends wrote the collection together, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

They didn’t intend to necessarily begin a new literary movement, but they did: Romanticism.

Lyrical Ballad

A ballad is typically a dramatic poem that tells a story. Ballads don’t tell the reader what’s happening but instead SHOW the reader what’s happening.

A lyrical poem is typically dedicated to personal experience and emotion.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is somewhat lyrical, but it’s mostly a story, right?

Thus why it’s called a lyrical ballad.

Form

Most of the stanzas in this poem have four- lines, called a “quatrain,” and an ABCB rhyme scheme, so the second and fourth lines of each stanza rhyme.

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been

Alone on a wide, wide sea:

So lonely ‘twas, that God Himself

Scarce seemed there to be.

Rhyme and meter

The meter is characterized by a lot of iambs

An iamb is a short beat followed by a long one (or, unaccented syllable followed by an accented one)

Be-low the church be-low the hill

Be-low the light-house top

Allegory

An extended metaphor in which a character in a story or poem represents an abstract idea...It usually involves moral or spiritual concepts which are more significant than the actual narrative.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Internal Rhyme

is rhyme that occurs in a single line of

verse.

End Rhyme

End rhyme is when a poem has lines

ending with words that sound the same.

Inversion

 For poetic effect, Coleridge inverts the word order from time to time.

Alliteration

 The repetition of sounds, especially initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words (as in “she sells sea shells”).

 Although the term is not frequently in the multiple choice section, you can look for alliteration in any essay passage. The repetition can reinforce meaning, unify ideas, supply a musical sound, and/or echo the sense of the passage.

Alliteration

 He holds him with his skinny hand (line 9)

 The merry minstrelsy (line 36)

 The furrow followed free (line 104)

Anaphora

 The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around. (line 59-60)

 Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy (lines 190-

Irony

 (1) verbal irony – when the words literally state the opposite of the writer’s (or speaker’s) meaning

 (2) situational irony – when events turn out the opposite of what was expected; when what the characters and readers think ought to happen is not what does happen

 (3) dramatic irony – when facts or events are unknown to a character in a play or piece of fiction but known to the reader, audience, or other characters in the work.