The Imaginary and Silence: An Analysis of Ballad Poetry and Coleridge No poetic style within the context of the Romantic Tradition of English Literature emphasizes individual experience, nor glorifies the past and nature, quite like the Ballad. This literary tradition hearkens back to civilization before the invention of the written language and the medium of orality through which man publishes authentic creation. While conventional ballads, such as Beowulf or Robin Hood remain authorless or as some would argue the amalgamate of a communal authorship, Literary Ballads’ of the Romantic tradition attribute their authorship to titans of the Literary Canon such as Wordsworth, Byron, and Blake. Through the Ballad form, Romantic authors exploring
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Using William Blake’s, “Songs of Innocence,” as guide, McLean notes lyric poetry swiftly establishes, “the occasion, scene, and mode of poetic composition,” (McLean 427) transfiguring the audience so that the reader not only reads words on paper, but imagines themselves as auditors of the original narrative. To this extent of the oral-literate conjunction, Coleridge adheres to tradition in that the poem’s narrative suggests that the story is not told directly by a speaker to an intended audience, but rather overheard by an individual and repurposed to impose a certain moral lesson upon the reader. Coleridge immediately establishes the occasion of the poem upon introducing the Mariner as he stops an individual Wedding-Guest before he can enter the church where presumably, the ceremony is about to begin. Cueing the reader into the orality by which the narrative will unfold, Coleridge narrates, “he holds him in his glittering eye-the wedding guest stood still, and listens like a three year child: The mariner hath his will.’’(Coleridge 635). In addition to establishing the mode of poetic composition, Coleridge suggests through portrayal of the Mariner’s glittering eye, unspoken horrors inflicted upon the character that warrants particular silence from an unsuspecting audience. The authors employment of sights and sounds narrated by a third party such as the ‘Second Voice’ observation of the Mariner “Still a slave before his lord, the Ocean hath no blast; his great bright eye most silently up to the moon is cast, transfixes the singular oral event of the Mariner and the Wedding guest, and establishes the ballad as a story of multiple oral perspectives to be circulated an repurposed for the benefit of any who chooses to hear the tale. Despite the original experience of the
Using William Blake’s, “Songs of Innocence,” as guide, McLean notes lyric poetry swiftly establishes, “the occasion, scene, and mode of poetic composition,” (McLean 427) transfiguring the audience so that the reader not only reads words on paper, but imagines themselves as auditors of the original narrative. To this extent of the oral-literate conjunction, Coleridge adheres to tradition in that the poem’s narrative suggests that the story is not told directly by a speaker to an intended audience, but rather overheard by an individual and repurposed to impose a certain moral lesson upon the reader. Coleridge immediately establishes the occasion of the poem upon introducing the Mariner as he stops an individual Wedding-Guest before he can enter the church where presumably, the ceremony is about to begin. Cueing the reader into the orality by which the narrative will unfold, Coleridge narrates, “he holds him in his glittering eye-the wedding guest stood still, and listens like a three year child: The mariner hath his will.’’(Coleridge 635). In addition to establishing the mode of poetic composition, Coleridge suggests through portrayal of the Mariner’s glittering eye, unspoken horrors inflicted upon the character that warrants particular silence from an unsuspecting audience. The authors employment of sights and sounds narrated by a third party such as the ‘Second Voice’ observation of the Mariner “Still a slave before his lord, the Ocean hath no blast; his great bright eye most silently up to the moon is cast, transfixes the singular oral event of the Mariner and the Wedding guest, and establishes the ballad as a story of multiple oral perspectives to be circulated an repurposed for the benefit of any who chooses to hear the tale. Despite the original experience of the