William Wordsworth And The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

BibliographyAsbee, S. (2006) Approaching Poetry, Milton Keynes, The Open UniversityReid, N. (2006) Coleridge, Form and Symbol, Or the Ascertaining Vision, Aldershot, Ashgate PublishingWellek, R. (1963) The Concept of Romanticism in literary historyin Bygrave, S (2006) Romantic Writings London, The Open UniversityZuk, E. Coleridges Blank Verse [online], http://www.expansivepoetryonline.com/journal/cult072004.html (Accessed 28th April 2008)

The Christian belief is that no matter what you do wrong or to what extent, you are always able to be forgiven. As long as you are able to realize and admit to what you've done wrong and are willing to pay for your sins and repent, you will always be forgiven in the eyes of God. In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the mariner is willing to repent. After committing his sins against nature, he comes to realize that it is not to be taken for granted. By realizing and expressing the beauty that nature is, the mariner is granted his forgiveness in return for penance; his telling of this story.

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

Albert Einstein spoke of nature and its value when he said, “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” As Einstein pointed out, by looking into nature you could discover something new about yourself and the world around you. John Muir and William Wordsworth both discovered joy when they looked deep into nature. This joy gave them a new perspective on nature and life and they each expressed this joy through different works of writing. Both authors have a unique outlook on nature and its impact as well as different thoughts on how to share their relationships; Muir used diction and connotation to show his relationship in his essay “The Calypso Borealis” where Wordsworth used tone and syntax in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”.

Walt Whitman loved to experiment with form when it came to poetry. He used his verses to show his complete adoration of all things wild, and our role as beings in this infinitely complex and thought-provoking universe in which we exist. To say he had a bit of a “nature crush” would be an understatement – Whitman goes in to great detail of his love for the wildness and often describes his emotions in a viscerally sexual manner, using poetic devices to underline his immense feelings for environment and hammer in the imagery to readers of how majestic the world appears to him. “Romantic” poets loved the outdoors – if it wasn’t contained in four walls and a roof, they were all about it. They loved to praise the innate details that made our planet so incredible,

Nature has an undefinable meaning as the theme is utilised in literature, and it has been a topic of reflection within the Romanticists since the beginning of the era. Romanticism and nature and inextricably linked ideas. Poets; Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman wrote during the romantic era, and both drew heavily from aspects of nature in their work. Nature can be paralleled against several things, including humanity and the idea of life and death. The contrast between the natural world and the artificial world, and what this means for society, is also strongly eluded to in Dickinson and Whitman’s poems. Each poet uses nature as the backbone to their poetry in several instances. Dickinson’s, “Hope is the Thing with Feathers”, (Dickinson, 19) and “My Life Has Stood A Loaded Gun”, (Dickinson, 69) are strong examples of this. Whitman’s, “Song of Myself”, (Whitman, 29) and, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”, (Whitman, 255) are also poems that show the connection between nature and romanticism. Poets, Dickinson and Whitman engage with romanticism in a creative and constructive manner through the utilisation of the natural world.

To the Romantics, the imagination was important. It was the core and foundation of everything they thought about, believed in, and even they way they perceived God itself. The leaders of the Romantic Movement were undoubtedly Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close friend, William Wordsworth. Both were poets, and both wrote about the imagination. Wordsworth usually wrote about those close to nature, and therefore, in the minds of the Romantics, deeper into the imagination than the ordinary man. Coleridge, however, was to write about the supernatural, how nature extended past the depth of the rational mind.

According to Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia, an allegory is described as a fictional literary narrative or artistic expression that conveys a symbolic meaning parallel to but distinct from, and more important than, the literal meaning. This is true in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an allegory that symbolizes the inherent struggle of humans facing the ideas of sin and redemption. In writing this poem, Coleridge spent four months of sustained writing upon his purpose of supposing that supernatural situations are real. This purpose is seen clearly in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", which demonstrates

In Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he writes, “I have wished to keep my reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall interest him” (297). With this assertion, Wordsworth highlights his desire that readers of his poetry respond with sentiment when presented with genuine, unembellished characters. His attempts to prove this claim can be seen in the poems Michael and The Ruined Cottage. Observing how the two poems handle certain rhetorical devices—a frame of narration, personification of nature, meditation on ordinary objects, and Biblical allusion—reveals their intended purpose as promotions of empathy. Discerning the similarities and differences between Michael and The Ruined Cottage allows the moral lessons within Wordsworth’s poetic experimentation to be uncovered.

Lastly, the Romantic Era blended human emotions with nature. The interfacing of emotion and nature was emblematic of Romantic poetry, whether it engrossed the idea of bequeathing human emotions to an innate article like a river or connecting the scenery to the temperament of the writer. (James, 491) This kind of beauty that is

The friendship of Coleridge and Wordsworth is one of the most literary, productive relationships among the poets of the Romantic Period. Coleridge and Wordsworth were “together on daily basis since July 1797” (Matlak 72). Wordsworth’s poetic career was “reconstructed, if not entirely created through the process of a poetic exchange that made his earlier importance an affective power” (73). At the same time, Wordsworth contributed similarly to Coleridge’s literary career. For example, many of Rime of the Ancient Mariner’s imagery and narrative events were suggested by Wordsworth (Matlak 83.) An early important example of their literary partnership was their Lyrical Ballads. As this friendship lasted until the death of Coleridge, many of the

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as a product of its culturally inscribed author, presents a confused Unitarian world view consistent with that of the Romantic Movement of its time. It attempts to exemplify this view within an unpredictable and often mysterious universe, and by rebuking the hegemonic ideologies held by the text’s cultural antagonists, seeks to grant the awareness of an often unreasonable world populated by its reader’s passionate persona.

Romanticism is a style of art or literature during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that emphasizes a love for nature, distrust of society, organized religion, celebration of the child or individual, and emotion over reason. In William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much with Us” Wordsworth speaks about how society is so materialistic while speaking on the significance of nature. Ironically the title of this sonnet exemplifies one of the Romantic ideas and expresses one of Wordsworth’s main points regarding nature. Wordsworth uses a connection to nature as well as religion to emphasize Romanticism in his work.

Robert Frost’s nature poetry occupies a significant place in the poetic arts; however, it is likely Frost’s use of nature is the most misunderstood aspect of his poetry. While nature is always present in Frost’s writing, it is primarily used in a “pastoral sense” (Lynen 1). This makes sense as Frost did consider himself to be a shepherd.

One of the most popular themes for Romantic poetry in England was nature and an appreciation for natural beauty. The English Romantic poets were generally concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. The Romantics found this form of world view to be restrictive. They felt that imagination was crucial to individual happiness. The imagination also provides a common human bond; a means of sympathy, of identification. However, the absence of imagination, the Romantics felt, would lead