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The Moral of the Ancient Mariner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Newton P. Stallknecht
Newton P. Stallknecht*
Affiliation:
Bowdoin College
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Extract

After Professor Lowes' monumental study of the Ancient Mariner as a work of pure imagination, it may seem futile to search the poem for any didactic meaning or philosophical message. Professor Lowes has written that “to interpret the drift of the Ancient Mariner as didactic in its intention is to stultify both Coleridge and one's self!” But I trust that this essay will not result in verification of Professor Lowes' dictum. We must not be too quick to class even slightly obscure poems of Coleridge's as works of pure imagination. When we recall his philosophical disposition and the great fame which his somewhat murky speculation brought him during his own lifetime, the danger involved in such procedure should seem obvious.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1932 , pp. 559 - 569
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932

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References

1 The Road to Xanadu (New York, 1927), p. 299.

2 Table Talk, May 31, 1830.

3 Op. cit., p. 302.

4 Op. cit., p. 299.

5 The Dungeon (1797), l. 30.

6 See the author's Wordsworth and Philosophy, PMLA (December, 1929).

7 The Prelude (1805), xi, ll. 75 ff. and 133 ff.

8 Op. cit., xi, ll. 42 ff.

9 Chapter xiv, Biographia Literaria.

10 Memoirs of Wm. Wordsworth (London, 1851), Vol. i, pp. 107–108.

11 ll. 232 ff.

12 ll. 250 ff.

13 Op. cit., xi, ll. 133 ff.

14 Op. cit., xi, ll. 106–107.

15 Op. cit., xi. ll. 251 ff.

16 Lime Tree Bower, ll. 38 ff.

17 ll. 341 ff.

18 ll. 516 ff.

19 Op. cit., xiii, ll. 261 ff.

20 Op. cit., xiii, ll. 197 ff.

21 Op. cit., xii, ll. 44 ff. (with omissions.)

22 Cf. Professor De Sélincourt's mention of this fact in his edition of The Prelude, p. lvii.