Lit 12, Wed. May 18

Coleridge: Take notes on the Coleridge section page 490, plus get the notes from a friend as I added to the text summary.

We read his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner aloud under the trees. The poem is 612 lines long so make sure you allow 80 minutes to read, enjoy, digest.
Once you have read it several times, answer the questions below. They are due Friday.

Be sure to choose your poet for the project which is due Mon. May 30.

Intending to re-write the mid-term?
Study sessions are manadatory. Today and tomorrow at lunch. Friday after school.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Some of the questions below require one or two word answers; however, some questions will require more time to contemplate and then to formulate a short paragraph answer.

The answers are due Friday.

Part 1 (The story moves from present to past. Make sure you can follow it)

1. Describe the wedding guest’s reactions to the mariner. Provide quotes to support your response.
2. Why does the wedding guest stay to hear the story and chance missing the wedding?
3. Find examples of imagery that you think are reflective of Romanticism.
4. Find examples of onomatopoeia.
5. Explain why the mariner shoots the albatross?

Part 2

1. Why is it significant that the sailors must “burst / Into that silent sea” (Coleridge 105-106) alone?
2. How does the view of nature change once the sailors think the bird is getting his revenge?
3. What are the “death-fires: (128)
4. What Spirit is plaguing the sailors?
5. Why is it key that the sailors lose the ability to speak?
6. Why do they hang the dead albatross around the mariner’s neck?

Part 3

1. Find an example of metonymy.
2. What is the name of the woman on the ghost ship? What might she foreshadow?
3. Who is she married to?
4. What does Life-in –Death win as a prize for winning the dice game?
5. What happens to the Mariner’s shipmates?
6. Discuss the symbols in this section: sea thickening, dice game, slimy creatures, ghost ship, crossbow, the albatross, star-dogged moon, thirst, mute sailors, Life-in-death and Death.

Part 4

1. Why does the wedding guest fear the mariner?
2. Why can’t the Mariner pray?
3. What must happen in order for him to pray?
4. What happens to the Albatross?

Part 5

1. Find examples of pathetic fallacy in this section.
2. Describe what is happening here.
3. Who helped the mariner man the ship?
4. Why is the wedding guest afraid?
5. What penance is foreshadowed?

Part 6

1. How are the dead sailors dealt with?
2. Why is the mariner happy to see the hermit?

Part 7

1. Describe the hermit. Contrast the hermit and the pilot’s reactions to the ship and to the mariner. Why are they so different?
2. How does the Pilot’s boy react? Why?

Part 8

1. What is the mariner’s agony?
2. How does he gain relief from the agony? Why?
3. How does the mariner choose the people who need to hear his tale?
4. What happens to the mariner once the tale is told?
5. What effect does the tale have on the wedding guest?
6. What effect does the tale have on the reader?
7. Name the elements in this poem which typify Romanticism.
8. Discuss “He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast” (611-612)

Overview

1. The mariner adventures from innocence to experience. Explain.  
2. Why does this tale herald the beginning of the Romantic era?
3. What are your favourite parts? Why?

Study Notes: Be sure that you can define and give an example of the following:

Motifs: isolation, redemption (divinity), supernatural elements, natural world, despair, penance for crime, guilt

Genre: Literary Ballad: a poem which deliberately imitates the old anonymous folk ballads (Why is this form crucial to Coleridge’s Romantic themes?)

Elements: caesura, colloquial and elevated diction, archaic language, internal rhyme and end rhyme, alliteration, assonance, quatrains and some variations in stanza length, dialogue, narrative elements, musical, inversion, personification, metonymy