Coleridge's Rime Analysis

“as much of a project of poetic self-presentation as the poem proper,” (McLane 435). Wherein Byron employs the gloss so that the author’s intentions are clear, Coleridge subverts this trope by pairing the “Rime” with an additive gloss that further complicates the underlying moral objective of the poem. While in some instances Coleridge’s gloss serves to explain the narrative such as, “His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck,” (Coleridge 636) other additions complicate the narrative like the author’s description of, “one of those invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels.” (Coleridge 637). While Coleridge’s audience surely expects the supplementation of such expository …show more content…
In her essay, “Coleridge and Critical Intervention,” Marilyn Gaull indirectly counters McLane’s interpretation arguing by the time Coleridge adds the prose gloss to the 1817 version of “Rime”, “as a means to distinguish four layers of development: the original mariner’s tale, the ballad narrative of the story, the editorial gloss added when the ballad was first printed, and his own point of view on his invented materials.” (Gaull 59-60) further complicating the intended significance of each part as they fit into the larger poem. Coleridge illuminates the implausibility of the …show more content…
As Cairns Craig outlines in his essay, “Coleridge, Hume and the Romantic Imagination” to Coleridge, “imagination, in effect, can only be truly known when we have Coleridge’s conception of the imagination to help us understand it” (Craig 24). That is to say, ascribing any significance, purpose, or deeping meaning to a work other than what the author explicitly states, directly comprises the intangible nature of the imagination. On a constant basis, our minds unpack objects and images we come into contact with and repackage them based on our individual experiences. Whereas McLane interprets the use of the imaginary in ballad poetry in as the figure of the primitive, the popular and the authentically emotive,” (McLean 435) employment of nostalgia, Cairn would argue the ballad is, “fundamentally embedded in the evolution of modern culture,” (Cairn 24) drawing a relation between art and the self conscious. Reading “Rime” not as an allegory of times past by which people of a particular group or heritage may celebrate as particularly unifying or descriptive of their respective identities, but instead an