One of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s greatest achievements has been his influence on Romantic
literature, both in and out of the United States. After researching the
concepts and ideas that scholars use to describe the makeup of Romanticism, I
have a much better clue as to why Coleridge’s works are Romantic. This also
helped me to see how Coleridge’s writing differs from a typical definition of
Romanticism, and how he has had an impact on the way Romantic literature was
written and is now viewed. In his poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,”
Coleridge relies heavily on nature as a symbol to convey his meaning in the
poem. Within his poem, nature is actually the driving force of the poem because
the plot completely revolves around his incorporation of nature. In the
beginning of the story, the mariner and his shipmates became stranded in the
icy area where no living thing could be seen. Then, all of a sudden, an
albatross comes out of nowhere and flies over the boat, which breaks the
sailors away from the bonds of the ice near the South Pole. The albatross is
symbolic of a good omen for the sailors because it is the reason that they
break free from sure death. However, Coleridge later turns the writing into a
gothic literature. He has the mariner shoot and kill the albatross for no
apparent reason, which ends up causing the men to become stranded once again.
The albatross is a part of nature that is extremely symbolic because it
represents both a good and bad omen and also allows Coleridge to develop the
meaning of his poem.
The
Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al.
Vol A. 
No comments:
Post a Comment