3.1.2

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The text makes reference to many other texts. The main sources are The Prometheus myth, Paradise Lost, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tintern Abbey and Mutability.

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Walton the Ancient Mariner

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge‘s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner also mirrors a journey like Walton’s into the hostile waters of the Arctic.
  • In Letter II, Walton even makes reference to the epic Romantic poem: "but I shall kill no albatross...or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the Ancient Mariner".
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Walton or Victor?

  • Whilst Walton shares the self-interest and ignorance of nature as the eponymous seafarer from the poem, it is Victor that Shelley wishes us to view as the mariner.
  • He defies God like the mariner does when he shoots the albatross.
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Victor's hell

  • Like the mariner who descends into a living hell, devoid of natural life and God, ("water, water everywhere/ nor any drop to drink"), Victor also descends into a personal hell, devoid of family and alienated in the furthest reaches of the earth.
  • "I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure."
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,

And, having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread

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Divine Comedy

  • In Chapter 5, Shelley makes direct (and quite abrupt) reference to the lines of Coleridge’s poem within Victor’s narrative just after he has finished his "miserable monster".
  • He makes an allusion to Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy: "it became a thing such as even Dante could not conceive", referring to Dante’s Inferno section of the epic poem, in which he journeys into Hell.
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Victor’s narration

  • After this, Coleridge’s lines are embedded into Victor’s narration, illustrating his dread and despair as he abandons the Monster and flees into the streets of Ingolstadt.

Jump to other topics

1Narrative Structure

2Character Summaries

3Intertextuality & Allusions

4Biographic Context

5Chapter Summaries

6Key Themes

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