Summary Of Response To The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

Response to Statement 2:

In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge states that his part in the Lyrical Ballads was to dedicate himself "to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic"(see LB ch.14, reader p. 44). His challenge was to do this in a way in which the readers would be willing to forget their disbelief and the implausibility of certain aspects or actions of and around said characters. As I interpret it, the audience should thus allow themselves to accept an altered reality where supernatural things occur, without having to question them. This should ultimately help them to get a deeper meaning out of the text. There are several different aspects within "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" where we can see how Coleridge managed to fulfill his task. The first and most important necessity was the creation of a convincing altered reality. It needed to have enough similarities to the readers ' everyday perceptions to make them believe that it is not utterly absurd, but estranged enough to create a captivating, mystical atmosphere where spirits and skeleton ships are plausible. He has cleverly found a way to achieve this by using two places where hardly anybody  most certainly

The old man therefore tries to calm his listener down by stating that he is the exception, indicating that he is the only one LIFE-IN-DEATH could claim. Later in the poem, the ancient mariner asserts that his crew 's spirits are not threatening and evil, but of angelic nature. These appeasements also justify the readers in their decision of "suspending their disbelief", because they realize that there is a deeper message hidden between lines of the poem 's plot. Therefore, trust in poetic faith is rewarded in the